To the Rise
by colbub
Summary: Kageyama reincarnated alone, convinced he's slowly going mad. Sugawara lost his country, Daichi fails his duty as knight, Nishinoya wanders with a mission, and the Tanaka siblings abandon their past to yolo as adventurers. Hinata had everything the others didn't, but felt empty until one day he saw a magic mirror with a lonely boy inside. Then he straps on his bag and looks up.
1. The Case of Kageyama Tobio

**The Case of Kageyama Tobio**

The forest wasn't really a forest until some ways away from his village, but the slow transition of low scraggly bushes to spindly trees, then the spindly trees to large, thick canopies and wide trunks had always been somewhat calming to Kageyama ever since he learnt how to walk.

He liked exploring. He'd walk until he reached the bits of the forest where trees seemed to disappear into the sky before hoisting himself up one and scrabble towards the top. On the days he succeeded in breaking through the thin canopy, he would be greeted to a gleaming sea of silvery leaves, stretching towards a mysterious shadow in the distance that Kageyama guessed was the Capital that some of the adults talked sometimes. He liked to look at that shadow sometimes, in that stead-fast unblinking way that Hinata had called his ' _creepy-yama'_ stare.

What was there, in that city?

While he was staring at what he liked to imagine was filled with the metal skyscrapers and small corner-shops of home, he would feel a little hope that he wasn't the only one who ended up in this world. Maybe he had died. Maybe he was in a coma. Maybe all those memories of Earth was just a hallucination, just like all the others.

He'd stop thinking there, usually. Stop himself by climbing carefully downwards, focussing on his small knobby hands as they grappled down solid chunks of grainy grey bark. Dusting himself off, he'd dismiss the small cuts on his hands and wind his slow way home.

Kageyama's village was situated within a mountain range, and the extra height the mountain offered created a more expansive view than most. One side of the range was a great desert filled with salt and dust, the other side a forest. Kageyama's explorations tended to go towards the forest, as he liked to forage through piles of mulch, hopping narrow streams, and rooting out nests of animals with curiosity more than the baked intensity of the desert.

Japan had its rural areas but they weren't _undeveloped_ , so it wasn't as if Kageyama had ever lived within a primitive forest village before.

Sometimes he pretended he was one of those survivors in those nature documentaries, who sniffed a fresh poop and probably knew what animal it came from, their age, what they ate, and the condition of their teeth. Other times he tried jumping between low branches in the forest, pretending to be ninja. Once he hooked an old fishing net between two trees as a net, filled a small sack with leaves and mulch and tied it shut for a lumpy ball and tried to serve. The tie holding the sack fell apart when he hit it though, and Kageyama spent the next few hours untangling the nets from the branches until he gave up and made it a hammock instead.

But today, Kageyama didn't feel up to doing much, so he just nestled himself into his favourite tree and recited old stories to himself. Kaguya-hime (Yachi's favourite), Momotarou and his exploits (Hinata knew these all by heart), Guibli's Princess Mononoke (Asahi always got teary at the end), other small fairy tales.

It was when his voice had gone tired, and he'd resorted to watching a ladybug crawl up his arm when he noticed that the forest had gone unnaturally quiet. After a moment, even the ladybug on his arm whirred away towards a clutch of branches.

Hmm?

From the small track that Kageyama had worn down from the many months he'd been coming to his tree were the sound of footsteps crunching towards him. A black hooded fellow appeared soon after the noise, bounding forward as soon as they spotted him up the tree.

"Hello!" The hooded person shouted up, high-pitched and surprisingly squeaky. A girl then. "Are you Kageyama Tobio?"

"Yes," he answered back cautiously, eyes narrowed to see if he could recognise anything of the other. Her chin was slightly pointy. "Who is speaking?"

"A witch!" She exclaimed, bubbly like he hadn't seen in a long time. A smile flickered on Kageyama's lips at the exuberant reply. She kind of reminded him of Hinata. "Nice to finally meet you, Kageyama Tobio!"

Strange. "What do you mean by 'finally'?" Kageyama asked, sitting up straight now to truly give her all of his attention. The witch was about to answer before she pinched her mouth and glared at his dangling feet at her eye-level, pouting. "This isn't conducive to a pleasant conversation! Wait a second, Kageyama Tobio!" In a startling burst of athleticism, she jumped straight up to land right next to him, balancing perfectly on the branch. When he looked a little impressed, the girl puffed out her chest in a proud _ufufu_.

Judging from that burst of speed, if this talk went south he wouldn't be able to run away. Kageyama blinked, before trying to use this new vantage point to slyly look up her cowl just in case it actually _was_ someone he knew playing a prank on him. Not anyone from his village, but maybe _(_ his breath tightened) someone from _before?_

"I mean, I've been searching for you _for years_. You're really hard to find, Kageyama Tobio!" The witch said quite happily, ignorant to his thoughts and settling down to sit beside him, brushing off her skirts.

Years? Kageyama wondered. But he was twelve years old. And there was also the fact that... "I don't know you," Kageyama pointed out quite flatly. "I've also never been out of the village." _You're obviously not a villager either_ , he wanted to point out, because now that he was so close, he realised the cloth the witch was wearing was of a higher quality than he'd ever seen. It was nearly comparable to the machine-made clothes back on Earth in his previous life, which was quite impressive judging by the level of technology that he's seen so far.

But, Kageyama mused, he was also obviously born in a backwater village so maybe technology was better wherever the witch came from? Maybe he'd landed in this world's equivalent of a developing country. Food for later thoughts. He directed his attention outwards again, towards the witch who was flapping her arms excitedly.

"I am a witch of the Ki clan from the Great Eastern Continent!" The witch said proudly. "My name is Kiki! Nice to meet you, Kageyama Tobio, from Fisherman's Village! You gotta say, though," Kiki continued, "your village name is really misleading. I was searching for you around the coastline, not in the middle of a mountain range."

If she found him, Kageyama thought, then she'd probably knew about the Demonic King who'd rose ten years ago and put two and two together. The King had made seas into deserts, collapsed countries, and in Kageyama's case, shifted the tectonic plates to raise his village from a coastal town to a mountainous one.

He was two when his mother screamed and held him tight when the sea suddenly rushed forward, grasping at all boats and lower, rickety houses by the piers before pulling backwards, land in its grasp. The earth cracked, the world tilted, their shelf of crockery fell and shattered as fingers dug into his ribcage. His mother murmured prayers into his hair, hiding beneath their table. Eight hours later, their village was touching the clouds, and the sea was a pool of drying seaweed and rot from all the fish abandoned by the sea. Soon, where the sea had been had dried into a salty, desert landscape that stretched on, and on, and on.

When he was three, he'd been allowed to attend the annual funeral rites in his village. Standing in front of a list of names engraved within the pillars of the city hall, he listened to the village elder speak of a _Demonic King_ without any sort of irony or cracking laugh. No reference to cliché video game plot devices. He'd grasped his mother's hand when someone started crying at a name that was solemnly being listed, of people who'd died a year back. His mother nearly crushed his hand when his father's name got called. He watched the village elder light a funeral pyre with a wave of his hands and a yell filled with magic and thought

 _This isn't Earth._

A hand waved in front of his face, and his eyes refocused upon the black-hooded cowl of a smiling girl. "Man, you're not a talker are you?" Kiki stated, smile evident in her voice. "Are you trying to grow up into a dark, broody type of guy? You got the potential for it, mhmm. Yes you do."

Kageyama's face twisted. "Haah?" _Are you an idiot?_

"Hehe, your face is funny!" Kageyama continued scowling even as Kiki continued grinning under her hood, undeterred. "Well, I'm here to deliver a message anyway. My clan leader, Queen Kiyo, made a prophecy some eight or so years ago. I had to find three people and give something to them. It wasn't easy to track you three down, I tell you," Kiki shrugged. "Everyone was in so much chaos after that attack ten years ago…"

"Get to the point," Kageyama cut in flatly.

"Oh right! Yeah, so basically protocols dictate me to tell you that well, although you have no choice in accepting this divine gift at all, your destiny and your choices still dictate what your future will become. Your will, your choices, are all your responsibility. Yes? Now stay still."

Kageyama's face grew wary when Kiki suddenly stuck her arm out and her hand glowed extremely white. It lit up the forest around them, and actually pushed Kageyama a few inches away just by the force of it.

He'd heard of magic, but he'd never actually _seen_ it much. The only village elder who'd been able to do magic died when he was five.

Staring at the ball of magic in curiosity, he was about to reach out to touch it when Kiki leaned forward jabbed his forehead, right between his eyebrows, quick as a snake.

And in the heat, he saw _bubbleswaterashlaughtercampfiremasksgrinwarmthcorpse_ he tasted _smokeorangesapcrunchmintsweetsoft_ he smelt _orangemeatbunsmothballshome_ and he heard

he heard

" _I'm waiting for you, baka-yama."_ A whisper in his ear, a laugh. Feet pattering away.

"Hinata?" He asked, not even _daring_ to hope—

Kageyama's heart sank when there was no answer. Another hallucination then.

He opened his eyes when he realised he'd closed them, to see that the white light was gone, instead replaced by a clear, dark blue radiance that…

"What did you do to me?" Kageyama barked, falling off the tree branch when he overbalanced flailing at the light. Dark blue light was shining through his skin. _His skin!_

"Dark blue huh," Kiki was saying, grasping her chin thoughtfully. "Sraosha? Benzaiten? Saraswati? Ichikishima? Which one are you? _Huvarshta_. Doesn't matter I guess, all incarnations of flow and wisdom are powerful. Lucky, lucky, Kageyama Tobio, to walk in knowledge's name!"

The blue glow was dying as he watched, settling down under his skin. He didn't feel strange either, when he sat up and brushed himself off. Huh.

"Now, to check if it worked! Kageyama Tobio, look above my head. Do you see something?"

Floating above Kiki's head in square brackets was a block of text. " _Kiki's Delivery Express_?" Kageyama read out loud with disbelief. He eyed the witch's cowl again. Could she be hiding a Guibli heroine face underneath that hood? Did she own a black cat?

He still remembered curling into a worn sofa at Nishinoya's, Hinata blabbering on about something that happened in his day at his side, Tanaka roaring for _Nausicaa_ to be played first in their Guibli marathon first dammit! Chronology is important! Tsukishima was done with life in his corner as far away from everyone as he possibly could as he desperately stared at his phone, while Yamaguchi was longingly twisting _Spirited Away_ in his hands. That day had been the first time he'd watched the Guibli movies (part of the reason why they had the marathon was because Suga snitched about his horrible movie repertoire to Noya, who took it up as one of his sempai duties to educate his cute kouhai).

 _Kiki's Delivery Express_ was Yachi's favourite.

"Ooh, you got it right!" Kiki clapped. "Good! I've delivered Queen Kiyo's Divine Blessing, so now I just have to deliver Kiyoko-hime's message… where was it? Oh man, it's been ten years, I don't know if it's still here…"

Kageyama's mind blanked. Did he hear _Kiyoko_?

"Here it is! Here you go, Kageyama. Kiyoko-hime was only four years old when she recorded this message for you! It's _adorable_ , but I guess seers are mysterious and knowledgeable even when they're teeny tiny things, huh?" Kiki jumped off the branch and handed a small, black rectangular box to him, something sleek that reminded him of his modern phone. The only thing on it though, was a small black button at the top. "Press on the button when you want to see the message, I think Kiyoko-hime explains a few things in there. I've got places to be and things to deliver, so bye bye, Kageyama Tobio! See you one day!"

And just like how abruptly she arrived in his life, Kiki left, leaving Kageyama bewildered and confused behind her.

When Kageyama woke himself up enough to chase after her down the path, bubbling with questions, she was gone.

* * *

He returned to his village at night when everyone was mostly asleep. The forest at night was eerie, but comfortable. He always made sure that he was out of the thick forest before sunset, so that he walked slowly up the mountain back home watching the moonrise. The moon was a thick silver that night, a strong gleam that Kageyama walked through still made him amazed at how much the world had missed with light pollution.

One of Yamaguchi's smaller hobbies was watching the stars, and there'd been nights when they walked down the streets in one of the darker bits of the countryside and they would try their best to squint out constellations. Yamaguchi had an awkward laugh whenever he admitted he didn't know _that_ much, before pointing out a random star he recognised out of the hundreds strands of light and say "Ah! I recognise that one!"

Yamaguchi's laugh was on the back of his mind when he slipped through the village gates and down the road home.

On the way he tested out his new ability with the few people that were still awake. The old aunt was doing some late night washing was _[Diligent Worker]._ The hobo guy that always loitered near the former town hall read _[Former Town Mayor]_. The most shocking one though, was the highly respected lady in town who liked going through the neighbourhood checking orphans like him. Kageyama raised eyebrows at seeing _[The Lady Who Ogles Through The Bathing Screen]._

Really? Kageyama tried to remember if he'd ever seen her around the men's baths.

(" _Three times in the past two weeks Kageyama!"_ Yachi started hyperventilated in his mind. " _Three times!"_ )

Kageyama coughed an awkward hello back with the lady when she smiled and asked about his day before scurrying down a small offshoot of the main road back to his empty house. Scuffing off his sandals as he entered his hut, Kageyama sat on the small straw pallet he had for a bed and looked at the smooth tablet the witch had given him. Resting the tablet on his legs so that it didn't get dirty from the dirt floor, Kageyama's hand shook as it neared the button.

 _Kiyoko-hime_ , Kiki had said.

Was it really the Kiyoko he knew? Was he not alone in being reincarnated here?

With badly suppressed hope, Kageyama pressed the button on the tablet. His first reaction to the small flickering image that beamed up from the tablet, of a small girl with clear eyes and a mole on her chin was—

( _"Kiyokoooooo, I haven't seen you in so long!"_ Nishinoya roared happily. " _I love you!"_ )

His first reaction was to—

( _"Noya, Noya, look, chibi-Kiyoko looks so adorable!"_ Tanaka chimed in, before faking swooning sounds)

When a child's face that was clearly Kiyoko's beamed up as an image from the tablet, Kageyama felt—

( _"Ryu! I know how it feels to see Kiyoko after so long,"_ Nishinoya choked, " _But you're going to be alright! BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF YOUR LOVE, RYU!")_

Kageyama had calmed down by the time Ennoshita had stepped up and forcefully brought the two under control. So instead of feeling like he was going to die like that one time after he'd just run Japan's longest marathon racing against Hinata (they'd _tied,_ it was horrible) _,_ he instead only gripped his knees hard enough to bruise.

Kiyoko on the screen, a cherubic faced child around four years old, gave him a slow smile.

"Hello, Kageyama," she said gently.

Kageyama ignored the clamour in his head and bowed his head towards the screen in a bow before quickly straightening up.

"Kiyoko-senpai!" Kageyama yelled sincerely. He didn't dare close his eyes. What if she was gone when he blinked? "It's been a long time!"

And although the Kiyoko recording had absolutely no way of even hearing him, Kageyama imagined that she was replying when she continued with "It's been a long time."

Kageyama was forced to scrub at his eyes when they overflowed.

* * *

Back in his first life, Kageyama was self-aware enough to know that he was painfully awkward.

Sure, he had the self-assurance to not care about his painfully awkward behaviours, but he'd _known_ when Yamaguchi cringed, or Tsukishima snickered, or when Nishinoya and Tanaka reacted with extreme pride and called him 'their son!' he'd said something wrong. Not that he understood why. Kageyama was always _impeccably_ polite to his upperclassmen and his superiors.

In primary school, he'd made three girls cry and four boys fight him after pointing out some simple observations that he thought they'd be happy to hear. In middle-school, he made a whole team abandon him. After that, he decided to just… adapt to the situation. He'd go to high-school, meet with his team-mates, correct whatever he was doing wrong to the best of his ability, and… perhaps distance himself a bit for self-reflection purposes.

Then came Hinata. Then came _Karasuno_.

Kiyoko came with that, his first year. They hadn't talked much. The most would be an encouraging smile in the middle of a match with a towel, before moving on for Yachi with her offering of water bottles. For practice, he'd preferred to ask Yachi, because Kiyoko usually set balls for Sugawara, Daichi and Asahi.

After the third years graduated, Kiyoko only tagged along with Sugawara half the times they met up, and even then she stuck next to the third years and Yachi. Yachi would, on their walk home, always blush and gush about how _'Kiyoko-san is so cool! She's beautiful as always!'_ to no-one in particular while Kageyama silently followed on the side thinking about what type of yogurt would be good for an after dinner snack. Hinata would chatter with anyone near him (usually Kageyama), while Tsukishima usually hooked his headphones up and bobbed slightly to the beat with Yamaguchi by his side.

In his previous life, he had ever only talked to Kiyoko seriously four times.

The first time was around the time when the third-years were graduating. Kiyoko had found him about to enter the gymnasium for some quick practice, and he'd grown super awkward when he noticed her standing behind him and… staring.

"Shimizu-sempai!" He'd greeted, straightening up.

"Kageyama-kun," Kiyoko had replied, before getting straight to the point. "I wanted to say… thank you."

"For what?" Kageyama immediately questioned back, confused. He kept his peripherals on alert, just in case Noya or Tanaka were going to skid around the corner and see this vaguely confession-like scenario. He wasn't suicidal, thank you very much.

"You and Hinata… and everyone from first year really bolstered the team's spirit," Kiyoko said. "We went to nationals because of the team we made this year. You were part of what gave Daichi, Sugawara, Asahi and me… their dream. Thank you."

Kageyama, half-way through, recognised a fellow awkward-member of society by the half-rehearsed tone of the speech. By that, he deduced that he was probably not the only one Kiyoko was going to approach to thank today. He also realised that as cool and collected Kiyoko was, she wasn't the type to feel comfortable with overt expressions of emotion.

Ah, a comrade.

"It wasn't my effort alone, sempai," Kageyama replied honestly. "I should be thanking all of you instead." It was their guidance and ability to tolerate him, adjust to his character and temper, let him play, support and teach him, and most importantly, _accept_ him that made him the player he was now. There was still growth left. There were still victories left unwon. "Thank you!"

He bowed back, and Kiyoko obviously got flustered, stepped back, bowed quickly, and started quickly walking away.

Kageyama stood there for two seconds thinking how lucky he'd been to get accepted into Karasuno before stiffening. Wait a second! He'd been wanting to practice his spikes!

"Wait, Shimizu-sempai!"

"Hmm, Kageyama-kun?"

"If you have time, can you toss for me please? Only a few tosses!" He insisted, thinking maybe a few cartfuls of volleyballs weren't _that_ many.

"Ah, umm…"

Kageyama held no offence at how quickly Kiyoko declined and ran away. Surely she had lots of things to do, having just graduated! Kageyama just sighed a little in his heart, but resolved himself to practice his serves instead.

Then Hinata barged in halfway through the casket of volleyballs, and demanded tosses. The rest of the team filed through a little after that, just after graduation, to play one last game together. Yachi cried on the sidelines, and everyone got super emotional as the third years gave small speeches, and recounted how they took _Nationals_.

Then they'd all left to eat dinner. Ukai tearfully footed the bill, half sentimental and half from wondering where teenage boys _put_ it all. Certainly not their brain.

In his memory, Kiyoko smiled on the sides, fending off Noya and Tanaka with professionalism, chatted with Yachi, and at the end with a snap of a photo, stood on the side with them all with a flash of an urchin grin.

* * *

And it was the same Kiyoko. Her smile was still just as warm, her eyes still that slate grey-blue and rounded in a heart-shaped face. This little girl would grow up into the classical beauty he remembered, sharp, awkward and kind all at once.

In the video, Kiyoko's chubby four-year old cheeks belied how sharp her gaze was. It was strange to see Kiyoko without glasses. Kageyama's hands trembled as he carefully held the screen right at eye-level. It was nearly too bright, within the dark.

Kiyoko was wearing a modern looking sundress, bright blue with flowers all around the hem. She looked happy and well-fed, which reassured half of Kageyama's worries already.

The video was jostling a little, because the tiny Kiyoko on the screen was holding whatever was recording this video in her hand as she trekked through a forest.

"It's been a long time, Kageyama," Kiyoko was saying, and Kageyama nodded, leaning closer to the screen to see more. The trees around her were very different to his own forest – her forest was darker and gloomier, with very little underbrush underneath and an extremely thick canopy that only let certain strands of sunlight filter through between rare gaps in the trees. His forest had tall trees too, but also thick branches and sparse leaves that made it bright and cheerful. It made Kiyoko's features darker than they could've been and Kageyama had to squint.

"I'm sure you have a lot of questions," Kiyoko continued, smiling slightly at him. "This recording doesn't have enough time to answer them all. So first, I will say that we are not alone. From what I see, many people we know landed here after reincarnation. Whether this was coincidence or something more, I cannot answer yet."

Kiyoko fell into silence when she stepped into a clearing, and in the corner of the screen Kageyama saw a small waterfall where Kiyoko subsequently sat at the edge of.

"You know magic exists here?" Kiyoko asked. "I was lucky enough to be born with the ability to see the future. In that, I saw you, Kageyama. Suga, Daichi, some of my own friends…" She kicked her feet in the water a little, cradling the recorder in her palms. After a short pause, she added "Hinata too. You'd want to know that. They're… a lot of them are here."

Kageyama paused, heart stilling.

"My mother here sent something alongside this recording. The divine blessing. It's very powerful, Kageyama. If you accept it, if you follow it… it'll lead you to us. The people who knew you _before_. But if you do… it's also very dangerous. So I understand if you do nothing with this blessing and stay in your village. You'll be safe."

"But if you do accept," Kiyoko said, accidentally kicking too much water and splashing some on the recorder. She hurriedly wiped it away, and gave an apologetic smile to Kageyama as she continued. "If you accept, then tomorrow morning gather your supplies. Go down the mountain towards the desert, into the town there. You'll know what to do next."

( _"So we're out there somewhere?"_ Tsukishima murmured. _"Interesting…"_ )

"Whatever you do, Kageyama, know that I wish you the best. Thank you for listening to me." Kiyoko gave one last smile before the projection flickered out of existence.

Kageyama was left sitting on his tiny straw pallet, in his dirt hut in a settling, quiet darkness with a small smile on his lips. That night, he told the voices in his head to be quiet ( _"Oh man, I bet I'm a super cool wizard, Kageyama!"_ Hinata shouted while everyone else hushed him).

"Goodnight," he said into the air with a little self-indulgence, before rolling to sleep on his side.

" _Good night, Kageyama!"_ Tanaka replied, the one to lead the goodnight that night.

Early next morning, he took a small potato sack. He put all that he had in there – a few sheets of paper, the rest of his food, Kiyoko's tablet and the one wooden doll his parents had left for him. The sack had weave that was rough enough that he could stick some braided fishing wire through, letting him draw it closed. With the line left, he tied the sack to an old wooden fishing pole that no-one had use for.

Then he crept out of his house, closing the door shut silently. Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Kageyama turned left down the main road towards the side of the village that had once faced the sea.

The sun touched the horizon when he reached the path down to the desert, illuminating vast swathes of salt and sand that stretched on to the horizon with no end in sight.

" _You ready, Kageyama?"_ Suga asked kindly. And although he knew better, Kageyama responded.

"I promise I'll find you. Every single one of you."

" _I'm sure you can do it,"_ Asahi reassured. _"You can do anything you put your mind to, Kageyama."_

Kageyama heaved in a deep breath and tried not to let the words comfort him as he started the trek downwards.

* * *

With no trees nor clouds, the sun burnt unrelentingly hot. The sun absorbed through the soles of his sandals straight into his heels. He was dripping sweat before mid-day.

To distract himself, Kageyama reminisced, as that was easier than watching the endless salt-bushes pass by, or the dried husks of delicate fish bone that still crunched underneath his feet as he walked. Autumn was coming soon, but summer clung to the world like it was reluctant to let go.

But that was one of the things in this world has going for it, Kageyama acceded, not letting the sun stop him from looking up and appreciating the sheer azure expanse of the sky, letting himself feel the tug of his heart from the view that yelled _free_. This world was so clean _._ The sky was spectacular. It reminded him of milder walks back in Miyagi, a slightly cloudier, smoggier sky that shone clear compared to Tokyo. He could imagine the burnt smell of diesel from a passing motorbike, the creak of a squeaky bicycle wheel walking in tandem with him.

It was a memory before they decided to move out of their town, planning for a larger life. University exams had been hard, but through Yamaguchi, Yachi and an unenthusiastic Tsukishima's collective efforts, Hinata's sheer mind-breaking work and Kageyama's sport scholarships, they'd gotten through by the skin of their teeth.

They'd been eighteen and young. Dreams in their pockets, eyes on the stars.

"Hey. Kageyama."

"Hn?" Kageyama grunted in response, looking away from the mountain that Hinata biked over every day to school. The mountain had always been a slightly distant loom on the near horizon, just something to stare at from the school window. Kageyama wondered if biking the mountain every day would give him extra stamina. Maybe that was the secret to finally breaking their stalemate. Hmmm…

"Kageyama, are you listening to me?"

Kageyama's eyes lit up as he mentally revisited his timetable. School was over, so he _could_ bike if he wanted to! His tosses had gotten a lot of sport magazine coverage, but he still had to work on that serve Yamaguchi had started teaching him. Maybe he could ask for a few of his teammates to train with him? Well, until university, anyway…

"Bakayama!"

Hinata jumped right in front of him way too close, his face right in front of his in a determined glare and forcing him to stumble back.

"What?" He barked in annoyance. "If you're going to say something, just say it, dumbass!" He moved to whap his head, but Hinata had long experience with this and wasn't _stupid_ , okay. He ducked away, which wasn't that hard because he'd grown since they first met, but not enough to catch up to Kageyama's chin because Kageyama had grown too.

Something Kageyama liked rubbing in his face, of course.

"Hey, _I_ called your name like, three times!" Hinata put his hand on his hips and glowered, irritated. It was _Kageyama_ who suddenly went aggressive! It wasn't his fault! "You're the stupid one!"

"No, you are!"

"No, you are!"

"No, _you_ are!"

"Ah," a flat voice came from behind them, "look, Yamaguchi. Children unattended on the street." There was a mumble then, to a companion, which prompted immediate swift laughter. Yamaguchi and Tsukishima passed them on the way to the Ukai's shop, where Yamaguchi was stifling snickers while Tsukishima smirked.

Hinata immediately puffed up like a cat, his eyes narrowing. "I am _not_ a kid!" He yelled, still obviously offended at their last Karasuno team outing to the amusement park, and getting offered all the child prices. "Come back, Tsukishima! I'm gonna get revenge!"

"Oh, do you want me to slow down for you? I'm not so sure your _short legs_ are… enough to keep up with mine," Tsukishima yawned, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, and that was when Hinata blew up.

Hinata started roaring for "Tsukishima, you bastard, _I'LL SHOW YOU SLOW_ ," and raced after the blonde, leaving his bike behind with Kageyama. Again. Kageyama impassively wondered whether Hinata would ever stop reacting to Tsukishima's height jabs.

Never, probably.

Kageyama watched as the three of them ran down the street – Tsukishima loping, as if not wanting to admit he was having any sort of fun, Yamaguchi following for the heck of it, and Hinata in offended fury. Well, Kageyama sighed, that was one train of thought effectively ruined. Hinata in a nutshell really.

So Kageyama resigned himself to thinking about training regimes a little later, picked up Hinata's bike and started walking it down to the shop. The handlebars were a bit low for him, but it was nice and familiar to sling his bag into the basket with Hinata's and move down the familiar street to Coach Ukai's shop. He daydreamed about some sneakers he saw the other day. He wondered about what Hinata had been trying to tell him before Tsukishima had interrupted.

"What was it?" Kageyama asked later, after their team dinner had passed. They'd all escorted Yachi to the bus stop by then, Tsukishima and Yamaguchi having left the other way while Kageyama waited for Hinata to finish fiddling with his bike. Hinata's bright head of hair tilted in confusion, indicating to Kageyama he was listening.

"What's what?" Hinata's voice had deepened only a little, maybe. When it wasn't overly enthusiastic with 'Kageyama, toss! Toss! Toss to me! _Why aren't you tossing to me?'_ , it was strangely inquisitive and animated. It fascinated Kageyama to no end, sometimes, that he could do that. Kageyama always sounded either monotonous or angry.

Shifting to another foot, Kageyama started fidgeting, as his brain started complaining that it was _Hinata_ that started the conversation… before. "Ugh," he finally burst out, "Before the dinner!" Kageyama exclaimed, waving an arm to emphasise, and Hinata only scrunched up his face in suspicion, finally glancing up.

"What's what? Kageyama, are you getting old already? Is your memory going strange just from graduating high school?"

This boy was ridiculous, Kageyama thought with a down-turned twist of his mouth.

"Which idiot was the one who nearly _failed_ their university admission again?" Kageyama smiled pleasantly (teeth bared, eyes glinting, the works), his hand trying to grab Hinata's head and squashing it into as tight a grip as possible, only for Hinata to duck away in the last minute. He had been getting way too good at that, lately. Kageyama couldn't be getting slow, could he?

"Hey! You only beat me by two points! Anyway, what did you mean? Kageyama?" Hinata's voice calmed down a little to a pitch more serious at the end, and Kageyama acquiesced and reluctantly drew his hand back. As much as they were unchanged from when they first came to Karasuno, even more _had_ changed. They had been the bulwark of the team, the upper-class men, and Coach Ukai had beat them up enough to know how to communicate with each other. Hinata wasn't a bad friend to have, in the end.

"You were trying to get my attention," Kageyama said slowly, "before we started arguing. Before dinner," Kageyama then added, reminding himself they argued at least three times _during_ dinner and so it was admittedly vague.

Hinata put on his thinking face, a face that Kageyama thought looked excessively dumb.

He told that to Hinata. Hinata punched him in the side, before returning to the task of tightening the seat of his bicycle.

"Where I called your name a few times?" Hinata replied, oddly subdued. Then the pause dragged on, and Kageyama worried about how the mountain tracks would be completely dark if Hinata didn't get moving on soon.

"Yeah. Then Tsukishima and Yamaguchi came."

"Ah, that." Hinata's ears turned a little pinkish, as he glanced at the two bags that were still in his bicycle's hand basket. "Well, that was nothing important!"

Aaaand… the thing about being partners for three years, is that you get close even if you don't want to. Not that he didn't _want_ to, nowadays. They were best friends for a reason. In the silence of them both knowing that Hinata's lie was _completely and utterly weak_ , Kageyama waited for Hinata to come clean. He knew, somewhat, that he still intimidated Hinata sometimes because Hinata had never been good at hiding things. Why Hinata always expected the worst of his temper even after _years_ of knowing each other, Kageyama would never know. Was his face really that scary?

He put that thought for later, and pinned his gaze on Hinata now, who was desperately adjusting his bike as fast as possible.

Huh.

"You're lying. Why?" Kageyama asked, genuinely confused.

"Haha, see you, Kageyama!" Hinata used his laugh to distract Kageyama, swinging a leg over his bike as he launched his bag back at him, making him stumble back a step when Hinata started his bicycle with ease, already streaking towards the darker lit roads of the mountainside.

Kageyama never did get what Hinata had wanted to say back then. He regretted it a little afterwards, since if it had been important to Hinata, then it was important to him too.

After leaving Miyagi and all the familiarity it stood for, he and Hinata had been inseparable, all the way through the years until the end – not roommates, because that would have driven them insane even before the first hour, but next door in the dorm blocks. Similar classes sometimes, when there were free electives, and when they shared classes they shared notes and cursed at each other's crappy note-taking. They played volleyball together in their free time, making up new tricks and formations, bickered every half an hour, and went home with snacks on hand. Sharing a crappy apartment for cheaper rent (and going insane before Sugawara stepped in).

No matter how many strong players he faced, no matter where he went to compete, he could never leave behind Hinata's influence on his volleyball, and volleyball had been his _life_. Kageyama had been scouted, Hinata had finally found a career he'd wanted to dedicate himself to, and they had started a new chapter of their lives…

Sweat dripped down his forehead, and Kageyama glared upwards.

Now, he slowly trekked down this salt-stained, barren mountain side as the too-big sandals on his feet flapped on and off his soles. Uncaring if he tripped on a random rock or bush, Kageyama kept looking up. Up and up and up, into a sky that didn't smell of wisps of passing petrol, that wasn't filled with annoying, incessant chatter. When he closed his eyes and pretended, his elbow didn't actually brush anything warm.

 _("We're here, Kageyama,"_ Daichi spoke out. _"You can rely on us."_ )

( _"Yeah!"_ Hinata chimed. _"Come on, Bakayama! I'm still here, aren't I?")_

Kageyama's breath hiccupped before he took a moment to breathe, before pulling out the tablet from his bag and pressing the button.

"Hello Kageyama,"Kiyoko's voice filtered from the screen. "It's been a long time. I'm sure you have a lot of questions…"

* * *

Kageyama reached the town at the bottom of the mountain late afternoon, and just like he expected, it was a ghost town. He'd come here before, but only once. It was a small resting post for traders that were insane enough to try crossing the desert their direction, and was literally just one street large. All it had was a small unmanned inn, a few abandoned huts, and a few posts to tie any animals that people might've brought with them.

Kageyama wasn't the one scared of ghosts (Hinata was), but even he felt uncomfortable surrounded by all the empty buildings. But after scouring through all five of the abandoned buildings and finding nothing special, Kageyama pulled a face.

This was it right?

Replaying Kiyoko's message just in case: ' _Go down the mountain towards the desert, into the town there. You'll know what to do next'_.

So here he was in the town, but nothing was really telling him what to do next. Kageyama stared down at the screen, trying to buoy the sinking feeling in his chest.

 _("You don't know yet,"_ Ennoshita said calmly. _"Calm down, wait a little.")_

He headed into the inn to wait. Replayed Kiyoko's recording a few times. Tried not to listen to the conversations in his head. He waited there until the sun started setting on the other side of the mountain, painting the sky a vague fiery purple. _"A little more, Kageyama!"_ Yachi encouraged. _"It's only been a day!"_

"There's no-one coming," Kageyama replied, stepping out and staring at the brilliant sunset. "I should go back up and come back tomorrow."

 _("As long as you're not giving up,"_ she said happily, before giving a small gasp. _"Wait, Kageyama! Look back! What's that?")_

Kageyama was turning around before he paused and squinted at the horizon.

There. A small figure.

Kageyama's heart caught in his throat.

As the figure grew closer, they noticed him standing there too, and moved quicker. Slowly, the small blur turned into a person wrapped in a light grey cloak, holding a heavy backpack. They trod through the sand surprisingly quickly, considering the direction they came from.

"Hello," the traveler greeted when they were near enough, slowing down. "Where am I? I'm afraid I got a little lost going over the desert." The traveler thumped his bag onto the ground with a grateful sigh, rolling his shoulders.

"This place doesn't have a name," Kageyama replied, hands clenching into his shirt as he tried not to be _too_ obvious trying to look past the head wrap the traveler had on. His voice was familiar. It was _familiar_.

"Really?" The traveler replied with a put upon sigh. "Dammit, Nekomata! 'Cross the desert! You won't need a map to get to the Capital! It's _destiny_ ,' he says. Should've known everything he says is a load of crap. Destiny my ass."

Kageyama blinked, trying not to believe his ears.

( _"Nekomata? As in, Nekoma's coach Nekomata?"_ Narita echoed in disbelief.)

"I'm sorry for bothering you," the traveler addressed him now, and he could hear a smile on his voice. "I'm not being frustrated at _you_ , don't worry! This is an outpost, right? Do you have any water here? I'm nearly out." The traveler took out a large water skin and flapped it around to demonstrate. "Look how sad it is. It's so empty. Like an inedible wrinkly raisin."

Kageyama uncurled his fingers from his shirt and nodded, before turning around to lead the traveler to the inn. He'd left his sack there anyway.

"You don't talk much do you?" The stranger cheerfully asked. "No worries, I can hold my own in conversation. I can talk about riveting stuff for hours, like the weather. It's a tad hot here, isn't it? I should've traveled at night, but I was getting so close to the mountains I just thought, man, _stuff it_ , and I just continued forwards. Well, it was farther than I expected but I'm here right before sunset, which is pretty good, if you ask me," the traveler chattered happily behind him.

 _("Reply, Kageyama,"_ Suga reminded him, laughing a little.)

"Uh. Yes," Kageyama replied stiffly.

The traveler chuckled over his awkwardness, before making a face and complaining how dry his throat was.

When they entered the dim space of the inn, and Kageyama gestured to the pump that drew water from a cache of groundwater, the traveler groaned in relief. "Is this water? Is this _shade_? You have no idea how I've been longing for some nice indoor time," the traveler continued companionably as he pumped up water to refill his skin, drinking his fill, before unwrapping his head.

When the traveler shook his head free, Kageyama stopped breathing.

"My name's Sugawara Koushi," the boy in front of him grinned. "Nice to meet you! What's your name?"

Sugawara's grey hair was a bit longer than he'd ever seen it, and his skin was much darker than whatever his memories had told him. When they shook hands, his palm was full of weird callouses too. But, just like Kiyoko… his smile was still the same. Kageyama let his own smile wobble up too, and hoped it didn't look too deranged.

( _"Well… that's trippy,"_ Suga said, sounding way too amused. _"Doesn't seem to recognise you though, other me."_ )

"Kageyama Tobio," Kageyama choked out, uncurling his shoulders to stand straight. "Nice to meet you too!"

"Kageyama, are you travelling too?" Sugawara continued after a huge gulp of water, nodding at his makeshift sack. "Where to?"

And abruptly, Kageyama knew what he had to do.

"I'm going to the Capital too," Kageyama lied. "I'll lead you there. We can travel together."

Sugawara blinked in surprise. "Well, seems like score one for destiny. Are you sure, Kageyama? I don't want to be a bother."

Kageyama gave an emphatic nod, not trusting his voice. Or his words. He didn't want to say something wrong _now._

This new Sugawara glanced out the doorway, before giving Kageyama a self-deprecating chuckle. "Well, it's dark now, and I've been walking all day. Can we set off tomorrow morning? This place seems comfortable enough." Glancing around the small inn, which was really just a one room affair with the water basin and a few rolled pallets put on a small shelf, Kageyama nodded in agreement. It wasn't as if his own hut was any better.

"Its fine," Kageyama said out loud, when Sugawara tilted his head for express confirmation and not just a nod, just like… _before_.

"Thanks Kageyama. Now please excuse me."

And promptly, Sugawara left his bag next to the water basin and quickly unrolled one of the straw pallets before collapsing on it, leaving Kageyama to stare at how quickly the snores started rolling. He must have been _really_ tired, Kageyama decided, as he pulled out a pallet of his own and rolled it out a few paces away from Sugawara.

 _He doesn't remember_.

 _("Are you okay, Kageyama?"_ Yachi asked, always the worry-wart.)

 _It's fine._

Actually… it was more than fine.

"Good night," he said out into the air. The usual chorus of goodnights echoed in his head, lead by Ennoshita today until…

"Yeah, good night," Sugawara sleepily mumbled to his left.

Kageyama smiled.

* * *

Kageyama dreamed.

Like all dreams, it begins with volleyball, and Kageyama lets himself be drawn into the clean squeak of polished floorboards, its grain yellow and nostalgic. In its waxed reflection, he sees himself holding a familiar ball; the plastic firm underneath his fingers, surprisingly light. He grips it, and his fingers are long and unfamiliar all at once. They're familiar, in a nostalgic way. Like feeling an old photo. His hands had grown so _large_. Outside the gym, a car honks.

"Yo, Kageyama!" A voice calls. Kageyama looks up, and sees Hinata with Yamaguchi on the court, ready. They'd obviously been practicing serves – and Hinata couldn't get the jump-float at all, the dumbass. It's obvious when his face falls into a loud ' _Awwwwww_ ' when the ball lands outside the lines.

"Idiot," Kageyama just gripes, walking over to them. Their smiles are wide and familiar. "You're holding your shoulders too tensely. Yamaguchi, show it to him again."

"Yes, yes," Yamaguchi smiles good-naturedly, and Kageyama wondered where Tsukishima was. "I can't believe I actually came when you two called me in to get some more holiday practice! Hehe, I don't even officially play anymore."

Hinata grins loose and happy when he slaps Yamaguchi on the back. "Well, Kageyama hasn't played in a long time, and I missed his tosses! It's like _baaam_ and _gwooosh_ ," Hinata gestures from right to left, bouncing to invigorate his point. "No matter how many plays we have now, that quick is still my favourite!"

"A long time?" Kageyama frowns, absent-mindedly tossing the ball in his hands into the air, preparing to toss it to Hinata, a few steps away. "Our last game was just—"

And then the whole gym _melts_ , the volleyball slips through his hands, and they're suddenly standing in front of a tiny frost-bitten field on top of a mountain. If they crest the next slope, they'd be nearly touching clouds. Kageyama is eleven years old again, and staring down at the world alone. There's a huge S-shaped river down the slopes, and even so far away it glitters. It's beautiful, in a cold, distant sort of way. He's hungry, but he'd lasted until his stomach had gnawed itself numb so it was okay. He knows he shouldn't sit here in the cold, should get back inside. But moving takes energy, and right now he has none to spare. Sitting outside always felt better than staring at the walls of his hut anyway, and he tucks his chin into his arms for warmth.

Kageyama remembers this, last year.

Winters were always harsh.

"So this is where you live now?" Yamaguchi asks, curious. His freckles are nearly invisible in the poor lighting – storm clouds were going to roll in heavy that night and drown the crops. "Wow, the view is beautiful! And the air is so clean!" He breathes it in, before eyeing him. "Hey, Kageyama, won't you dream Tsukki up? I think he'd like this too!"

"No," Kageyama replies shortly with a grimace. Why would he _voluntarily_ dream up Tsukishima?

Yamaguchi had never laughed loudly in his life, and watching Yamaguchi curl his shoulders for a small snicker made his scowl falter past a growing lump in his throat.

Behind him, Hinata laughs bright and happy. "Man, oh man, Kageyama _,_ hey, did you realise?"

"What?" Kageyama turns, grumping automatically.

" _I'm taller than you_." Hinata leans his arm on Kageyama's shoulder, leaning all his twenty-something weight onto his eleven year old shoulders. "For the first time in my life, I'm taller than you, Kageyama! Wow, this dream is _so great_ you don't understand."

"Get off, you dumbass!"

"Eep! No, Kageyama, get away! Tanaka, where are you?" Hinata races away, down the mountain towards the river, an orange blur down the scrabbly bush and rocks. As he fades into the distance, Kageyama has to choke back a yell.

'Don't go,' he wouldn't say. 'Don't leave me here alone.'

Hinata disappears as he runs away. Kageyama glares downwards, eyes hard and shiny.

Yamaguchi's hand touches his head, fleetingly. They'd become closer friends, later on in the years. Maybe it was just Yamaguchi's years of laughing and dealing with Tsukishima – he'd dealt with Kageyama's own awkwardness first with nervousness, then understanding. "When are you going to find us?" Yamaguchi asks, his voice contemplative and a little lost.

But before he could answer, Kageyama woke up, blinking rapidly in panic when all he touched when he reached out was the dark, the bone of his heels scraping dirt as he twisted, his eyes looking at the straw roof, the gaps that let the chill settle into his lungs with voices that he could never touch. His breath hitched, Kageyama _knowing_ what was coming, but not able to stop the hyperventilation from starting, hitching tighter, softer, shallower because _this was his reality he was alone—_

 _("Look to your left,"_ came Tsukishima's curt voice.)

Kageyama's neck wouldn't obey him. Maybe, he didn't want to. In the dark, it was too easy to think (know) that they were dreams. All of them.

( _"Stop being stupid and look,"_ Tsukishima ordered this time, stern.)

Kageyama looks. Then, reaches shaking fingers over a small gap and touches Sugawara's sleeve.

Slowly, unblinking, he lets his heart rate calm. Unclenches his lungs with sheer force of will. Then, curling to the left, he lets the sound of another person lull him back to, if not sleep, then at least peace.

* * *

 _Extras_

 _Kageyama loves milk, and many variations of milk. Once, he heard about this milk-tea that foreigners drank and was interested. However, when he mixed his carefully mixed green tea with milk, he felt so guilty about ruining a DISTILLED CUP OF JAPANESE CULTURE that he never tried again, even though he (secretly) kinda liked it._

 _Kageyama doesn't know what to do with friends. It's okay, because his friends know what to do with him so most of the time they tease, but also ultimately explain what they're doing and why. Tanaka is the best at this because Suga is too lenient with Kageyama. It's Hinata that successfully drags him out the most though._

 _Out of all of Karasuno, Noya and Hinata are the best with children, followed surprisingly by Kageyama._

 _Once, he went to a vending machine and fed some money into it, and pressed a button for milk. It didn't come out. After feeling annoyed, Kageyama fed another coin and pressed another button for the same milk. It also didn't work. He tried the same for the next four buttons because it was the only vending machine around with that brand of heated milk and it was winter dammit. In the end, it took Kageyama violently jabbing two buttons at once before the machine registered and gave him his drink. From then on, Kageyama vowed to always press two buttons, just in case. He was nine at the time, and he hadn't broken the habit since._

 _In a quiet, underground poll, certain members voted for who was the most stubborn within the Karasuno alumni. Kageyama was a strong contender for first, along with Hinata and surprisingly, Yamaguchi. In the end, the dark horse Ennoshita won due to his strong, unwavering, i-gotta-prove-myself mentality. (To his utter sadness, Asahi placed last)._

 _Kageyama is surprisingly (to many people) extremely self-aware. He knows what he wants, he knows how he thinks, he knows what to do, he also knows his own limits (and thus, also plots how to surpass said limits because as if he's going to be satisfied with how good he is_ now _when he can see how great something_ could be _). The problem thus lies in reading other people. First, he's unmotivated. Second, he tries to apply models he understands of himself to other people… which doesn't work out well because of the third reason, where although analytical and driven, Kageyama doesn't understand people who don't think like he does because he's backed up his own motivations so well with logic other people not doing the same confuses him. Thus he gives up interaction more easily that he actually should, something Hinata had continued to bug him for._


	2. The Meeting of Sugawara Koushi

**The Meeting of Sugawara Koushi**

On the night Kageyama was going to move out of his parent's house for the first time, out of nerves he visited Suga. Caught a train and a bus, and knocked on his apartment door. Sugawara opened the door with first curious expectation, then an amused chagrin when he saw Kageyama

"Excuse me!" Kageyama exclaimed as he toed off his shoes. "I'm sorry for visiting so late in the night!"

Suga welcomed him with a smile and a cup of hot tea before he glanced at the clock and blandly remarked, "Kageyama, you do know you have a _phone_ , don't you?"

 _Oh right,_ Kageyama's face said. Suga sighed dully into his tea.

However, what's done was done, so Kageyama breathed deep and got to the point.

"I feel nervous leaving home," Kageyama confessed, curling his fingers around the heavy clay of the cup. Suga always giving the traditional cups to his guests. "And then I couldn't sleep."

After a few beats of silence, Suga prodded, "And you were wondering…?"

Kageyama shrugged, suddenly feeling ridiculous for how he'd bothered Suga on a whim. Retrospection was 100%, as always. "How to transition well, I guess," he answered, out of the side of his mouth, feeling more than a little silly now.

"You _guess?"_ Sugawara echoed. "You travelled all the way here just to ask _that_?"

At Sugawara's face, Kageyama duly reflected at how his mobile phone laid forgotten underneath a pile of unused textbooks. Sorry, phone. He'd use you next time.

Sugawara rolled his eyes and leaned back to think on the question. "Well, if you're asking me how I moved out, all I asked myself was how I could make myself comfortable in this new dorm. I mean, that's what a home is right, a place to feel safe and comfortable in." Suga shrugged his shoulders and glanced across the table, but Kageyama had already started digesting his words, staring hard at the table as his brain tugged at that comment, broke it apart.

A rap on his head broke his concentration. "And you're staying the night" Sugawara grinned, a wry twist of the mouth. "It's a bit late, and I have the space."

"Ah… Thank you, Suga-san!"

All Suga did was chuckle, before leaning over the table for some gossip on how the others were doing.

* * *

When Kageyama woke up the next morning, his neck was a solid cramp from his shoulder up to his ear and the pre-dawn sunlight left the room of the inn grey and empty. Kageyama yawned, before his heart leapt in his chest in panic.

… _Empty?_

He scrambled up, his ears full with the sudden clamour of surprised voices inside his head asking him what was wrong. Ignoring them, he scanned the room, noting that the other pallet had been rolled up and put back onto the shelf, but his bag was still next to the basin… right next to Sugawara's bag.

Kageyama's shoulders drooped in relief and stepped outside.

"Sugawara?" Kageyama called out. "Where are you?"

"Here!" came a voice… from above?

Kageyama squinted up, only to notice that there was a figure sitting on top of the inn's roof in a meditative pose, comfortingly familiar when they stood up, patted off their pants and jumped straight down from the roof. The little _thump_ his leather sandals made on the dirt road was all the proof that Sugawara had just leaped down from a height of _at least_ five metres without hesitation at all, without needing a roll or anything, and Kageyama tried not to gape. Did... did this Sugawara do parkour or something?

When Sugawara did a stretch, hidden muscles _rippled_. Kageyama… tried not to stare. Much.

 _("Damn Suga, did you shoot steroids?"_ Tanaka said with admiring awe. _"I want that bod man."_ Suga chuckled back a " _You wish, Tanaka_." _)_

In the bright daylight, Sugawara was a weirdly built gangly teen beanpole, who grinned a grin that showed his whole rack of teeth and squinted his eyes shut against the sun as he attempted to see Kageyama properly. They smiled the same, tilted their head the same, and even rolled their shoulders a little the same way, demeanour slightly impish. This Suga gave him a small wave in greeting before blocking a yawn with his hand.

Kageyama couldn't help but smile. Maybe this quest thing Kiyoko gave him wasn't going to be so hard. He'd started yesterday, and already found _Suga_ , of all people.

He'd _found_ _Suga._

"Good morning, Kageyama!" Sugawara greeted, going inside the hut and holding the flaps open for him. Kageyama absently noted that the text floating above his head said _[?]_.

"Good morning, Sugawara," he replied back, following him back inside. Now that Sugawara had shed his cloak, Kageyama noted that he had some type of weird armoured hakama worn with a rather informal light blue men's kimono _,_ which made the scene all the more surreal because now he felt slightly underdressed in his ragged t-shirt, shorts and floppy sandals. Kageyama spent a few seconds wishing he could've made a better impression to _this_ Suga (last time his arguments with Hinata and the vice-principals' toupee didn't exactly make Suga think he was a nice, untroublesome person right?).

Oh well. Nothing to be done now.

Inside, they packed up their bags in silence – Sugawara checked over his stuff and stockpiling water. He had ten waterskins, comparatively to Kageyama's zero, and Kageyama helped fill them all, pumping hard when the water started flowing slower up the pipes. When he did his own inventory, he took one of the thin pallets in the inn. It wasn't as if anyone used them much.

Afterwards, he picked up his sack and fishing rod, and let Sugawara have his peace by waiting outside.

Cloudy today, he absently noted, as the sun rose and lit up the rows and rows of slight cloud that peeked on the other side of the mountain range. The desert sky on their side was clear as ever.

 _("Good thing too,"_ chimed in Yamaguchi. _"This is really nice hiking weather! Other Suga seems to pack lots of water, but dehydration is still risky so be careful." )_

Yeah, he needed a water bottle or something.

 _("More than that, Kageyama,"_ was Daichi, all wry. _"Your bag's practically empty.")_

Also true.

When Sugawara hefted up his pack on his back, all wrapped up in his cloak and prepared to travel, he turned his smile at Kageyama, who was all up and ready to follow him.

"So you're heading to the Capital too, right? What do you have to do there, Kageyama?"

Following you? Was the answer Kageyama choked down, because even he realised that might be kind of creepy.

 _("Pfft, no kidding?"_ Tsukishima snickered.)

Shut up, Kageyama growled back.

(" _Shhh, not helping,"_ Daichi interjected. " _Maybe say that you've always wanted to go to the Capital? I mean, it's that dark smudge in the distance you always look at right? It's not a lie.")_

"I've always wanted to go to the Capital," Kageyama parroted.

New-Suga blinked at him _really_ slowly, and Kageyama immediately knew he didn't believe him. Ugh. Lying was hard. "Really?" Sugawara doubtfully mused, as they started their slow trek up the mountain. "But it's so far away. I heard a friend say that the Capital is like, nearly a month away from the mountain range." Kageyama didn't miss how Sugawara's eyes slid to his pitifully small make-shift sack and fishing-pole combo, and added, "It's a bit far for an impromptu trip too, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Kageyama inadvertently agreed before stopping short. Uh, "I also want to travel because…"

" _Something Kiyoko said might help,"_ Ennoshita urged, and Kageyama reached for the black tablet in his sack and pulled it out, and noted that Sugawara… seemed to narrow his eyes at it? _"That blessing they gave you is probably a good reason to start adventuring. It sounded kind of important? That'll convince him, probably."_

" _Nice, Ennoshita!"_ A series of backslaps followed.

"This is a recording device that was given to me by a witch," Kageyama explained. "They gave me this blessing thing, and so I thought it was a good time to leave the village."

A pause. Sugawara's warm brown eyes flickered over him for a second, before his lips pushed up.

"Blessing thing?" Sugawara echoed him with an amused smirk, his brown eyes slightly teasing.

The next thing he knew, Suga would sigh at him in exasperation but in that _fond_ way of course, where he was extremely exasperated all the time. Question his life choices over a ridiculously spicy lunch or dinner. Share something funny (and surprisingly sarcastic) over last week's news. Maybe if he spent enough time around Suga, he'd remember that… _"He's not me, Kageyama,"_ Suga said, slightly sharp.

Kageyama deemed not to reply, waiting for other-Suga to finish his thought.

Sugawara hummed, head tilted in thought. "I… may have an idea what you're talking about. But hey, Kageyama," he said with a light laugh, pointing to Kiyoko's tablet. "Next time don't show this so easily to strangers." Sugawara plucked the black tablet from his hands and eyed it critically, before dropping it into his sack and drawing it closed, eyeing the fishing wire with curiosity before smiling. "Let's go then, shall we?"

Wheeling around, Sugawara increased his pace up the mountain, and with a mystified stare, Kageyama followed.

So… did he pass Sugawara's suspicion test or no?

* * *

The thing is, Sugawara Koushi and Kageyama Tobio were friends, yes, but they didn't actually start _really_ talking until after Sugawara had gone to university and all the first years became second years. It started off as a mentorship role thing, but slowly morphed into weekly café sessions where Sugawara guzzled coffee in a really, really unhealthy-looking fashion 'haha, Kageyama, this is just what all uni-kids do, don't worry' and lectured him on life.

Or more like, his emotional life choices.

Kageyama would begrudgingly admit, back then, that maybe he wasn't _really_ the most emotionally astute person.

"Kageyama," he remembered Sugawara frowning, massaging his temples. "Don't tell me you actually went into _another_ texting war with Oikawa. He dislikes you, you don't really like him either, why don't you just be the bigger person and let it go?"

Kageyama slumped deeper into his chair, and the wooden slats dug into his back. So he sat back up again, and wondered how Sugawara always somehow got the softer, padded seats that lined the walls before him. They looked comfortable too, all stylish red leather and patterned seat cushions. The café they liked had always favoured a softer cuter décor than others in the area, but Suga swore by this place's coffee, so they always came here.

"…He just keeps _replying_ ," Kageyama replied to the table, mulish. "Then I just have to reply back."

"And then it makes you all angry before practice, which leads Hinata to come complaining to _me,"_ Sugawara patiently continued, voice ever pleasant. "I'd be totally fine with you re-establishing contact with Oikawa if it didn't lead to other team-members calling me with complaints, Kageyama."

Kageyama was not pouting. He _wasn't_.

"But… he was replying," Kageyama replied stubbornly, his eyes pulled to the side where he tracked a fly which had landed on the other table and watched it like it was the most fascinating fly in the world. Which it was. Ooh, it flew to the wall. Fascinating. "I couldn't _lose_."

"Do you know I'm friends with Iwaizumi now?" Sugawara changed the topic, as he hailed the waitress for his third cup of jumbo sized coffee. Kageyama eyed the extra-large mug as it was set down – that couldn't have been healthy. "You're still one of the only people who could make Oikawa _seriously_ pissed off. We complain to each other. We also both wonder why you guys bother texting each other if you hate each other so much."

He didn't hate Oikawa, why did everyone think that? However, it was with a certain sense of shame that Kageyama started tracing the rim of his own cup of hot chocolate, staring at the cute pig cartoons painted all around the cup. For some reason, the pigs were orange. They reminded him of Hinata.

"…He gives good tips sometimes."

And that just makes Sugawara give the greatest sigh yet, as he drank half his coffee in one go and resurfaced like a drowning man, sucking in a huge breath.

"Volleyball," Sugawara muttered to himself, rolling his eyes. "That explains it."

And Kageyama drank his own hot chocolate, moped about his impending loss against Oikawa in his texting war. He looked at Sugawara, who still looked disgruntled and muttering something like how he _wasn't actually a mother thanks_ , and dipped his eyes, curling a small smile into his cup as he took a sip.

* * *

When they passed through the village in all its decrepit, poverty-stricken glory, all Sugawara did was wrinkle his nose. Kageyama agreed, and took them through the most deserted streets to not bump into anybody. They passed his house, and Kageyama passed it without a glance, knowing he'd left nothing much in there.

Kageyama had never really liked that place anyway. He glanced at Sugawara, and tried again to start conversation.

Geh. Small talk. They'd _both_ hated it, before.

Having debated long and hard over what question he should start with, Kageyama decided with "What is your favourite colour?"

"Green. You?" Sugawara replied, all easy.

"My favourite colour is orange. Um, what is your favourite food?"

"Spicy things."

Oh, still? That's familiar at least. Was there mapo tofu in this world? Kageyama wondered, dredging up past memories for any recipes he might remember. He hadn't been bad at cooking, back in the day. "I like milk products," he tacked on when Sugawara prodded him to answer his own question.

Tofu was pretty easy to make, if Kageyama remembered correctly. The mapo sauce though…

He'd cheated by using store-brand. Geh.

" _I know how to cook mapo tofu, Kageyama!"_ Yachi volunteered, _"I'm sure we can figure out a recipe together!"_ and Kageyama perked up for a few seconds before he forcibly reminded himself that _Yachi was not real_ and so even if his subconscious might've volunteering it wasn't as if it was helpful _._ Dammit.

"My turn for questions!" Sugawara clapped his hands, waggling grey eyebrows at him for Kageyama's attention before pretending to think thoughtfully, finger on chin. "Alright! Well, Kageyama, tell me your deepest, darkest secret!" Sugawara said jokingly, and Kageyama blinked.

"Okay." He shrugged. "Which one?"

"Any, I guess?" Sugawara hummed, easily maneuvering through the potholes and dirty slush on the road they were in, somehow keeping his cloak clean.

"Well…" _I'm reincarnated and you were one of my best friends in my past life and I think I've already gone crazy because I hear a lot of voices in my head including yours and you don't remember me and I can't remember the recipe to mapo tofu to cook it for you_ seemed like it would be a bit too heavy for a 'getting to know you icebreaker' conversation.

Kageyama took the easy way out.

"I used to like being alone," Kageyama said something he'd admitted to Sugawara _before_ , "but not anymore."

At that, Sugawara looked a bit nonplussed, lips pursed as he scanned Kageyama's face. "Okay. Hmm, thinking about it, I don't know where you come from?"

 _Well…_

"The village right up there," Kageyama nodded. "The one we just passed through."

"Grey, destitute, poor, extremely isolated?" Sugawara pointed backwards, and Kageyama nodded in reply. Sugawara was definitely looking at him peculiarly now, a slightly speculative gaze, and even before he spoke up, Kageyama added, "It's just, someone told me to go to the desert town before I started travelling to the Capital."

"Who was it?" Sugawara asked pleasantly, and Kageyama saw in his eyes the determined glint of slowly being picked apart and figured out, making him sweat a little. A trick question? Where was the grenade here?

"A witch," Kageyama finally replied. "The one who gave me the blessing told me to go to the town."

At Sugawara's speculative _hmmmm,_ Kageyama swallowed, painful and dry. He knew Suga _(Sugawara)_ enough to know that the smile he'd had on ever since they met, as familiar the face was, as pleasant as it was, was fake.

Trust, he chanted to himself, was not built in a day. Wasn't that what he'd learnt the hard way before? If he could do it when he was actually fifteen, he could do it now.

So Kageyama curled his fingers tight around his fishing pole, and continued building his list of ice-breaker questions.

"Favourite animal?"

"Hmm, pigs. Don't you think they're cute?" Sugawara smiled at him, a chuckle at the back of his throat. _Lie,_ Kageyama thought.

Kageyama nodded. "I like birds. Crows are fluffy. Foods you don't like?"

* * *

"Kageyama," Suga had once said to him at a team reunion back at Miyagi, back when team reunions had been comparatively easy, right at the cusp of adulthood. Asahi's new apartment had a view of the river, a long flowing line of silver that was soon blocked by a curve and apartment buildings. "How're you doing?"

Off the balcony, inside, Kageyama heard the furious bellows of a few of the louder members and a loud explosion from the TV. A shriek from Hinata, and Yachi's stammering. Yamaguchi's snicker.

"Good," Kageyama answered, holding himself straight on the balcony stool. "You?"

Suga's face crinkled into lines long familiar, like a laugh was bubbling just underneath his next word.

"I'm _good_ too, Kageyama," he teased. "So nothing else to tell your old sempai? No juicy gossip?"

Kageyama frowned and thought what people thought were interesting conversation topics. "Hinata tried to adopt a cat again?" He tried. He counted it as a success when Suga chuckled.

"Okay, but anything about you?"

Kageyama tried again to find interesting things about himself, but after a too long pause Suga let him off the hook. "Alright Kageyama, no need to hurt yourself. Let's talk about that last prefectural match instead."

At his words, Kageyama lit up. Man, that last play by number 7 on the field had been _amazing_ , and he'd wanted to discuss it for _hours_ but everyone was partying and no-one wanted to talk tactics with him because Hinata had been drawn into Nishinoya and Tanaka's mysterious schemes in the kitchen straight after they'd arrived.

Suga sat there for the next hour engaging in volleyball debate with him, their legs swinging from their seat on the table.

* * *

The Capital was a faraway place that Sugawara estimated would take approximately a month of solid travelling. Walking, camping, foraging until they hit the roads, where there would be traveler inns and cabins that they could sleep in.

"You don't know how to light a campfire?" Sugawara had asked him in surprise.

Well, he had been a country boy at heart back in Miyagi too, even though he'd never roughed it this much in Japan. Kageyama awkwardly plopped his small potato sack onto the floor, while Sugawara cleared the ground of foliage. "What do I do?"

"Just collect some twigs for now," Sugawara directed, "and we'll go from there." Sugawara, with characteristic patience, then ran Kageyama through the process – clearing the undergrowth, building a stack of kindling, telling him how if there were rocks around they'd put a circle around the fire, but this'll have to do. Then, after telling Kageyama to back up, Sugawara narrowed his eyes in concentration, pointed at the stack of kindling and said, _"Fos."_

A spark traveled from his finger straight into the kindling. The next second, Sugawara was feeding the small fire with bigger sticks.

Kageyama was gobsmacked.

" _Shoot, was that magic?"_ Noya asked, intrigued.

Hinata screamed in his head. Something garbled like, _"You're too cool, Suga-sempai!"_

" _Impressive,"_ Daichi laughed. _"You're a wizard, Suga!"_

" _Shut up, Daichi."_

"Was that magic?" Kageyama asked, mesmerised from the totally-normal-looking fire that was actually _magic fire_ holy crap. "That's so cool."

Sugawara glanced up at him, surprised, before glancing down. "You should try it sometime," Sugawara replied, focusing on bringing up the flames. "It's a good skill to have, and it's more common than some people think." They settled around the flames, and Sugawara pulled a few food items from his bag. Kageyama volunteered to cook, since Sugawara had built the fire right?

Cooking was done underneath Yamaguchi's constant encouragement, _'You can do it, Kageyama!'_ , dipping his eyes to watch the pot, warm and bright within the small clearing they'd found in the sparse forest. Sugawara was hammering the last peg of his tent into place, and the moment he finished, he threw a warm smile at Kageyama and plopped himself next to the fire too, staring in interest at the pot of stew Kageyama had been attending.

"Smells good, Kageyama!" Sugawara exclaimed, his brown eyes bright at the prospect of food. Kageyama grinned in pride. "And food always tastes good with company."

True, that.

When he glanced up, Sugawara was humming soundless song, taking inventory of his backpack. There were still words Kageyama felt that he wanted to say but they just—just like usual, really—wouldn't come out, just kinda stuck in his brain, whirling about.

 _I'm glad you're here,_ he thought at Suga instead, and finished stirring the stew.

"Can you teach me magic?" Kageyama asked over dinner.

"Hmm," Sugawara hummed, noncommittally. "I'll think about it. What about you tell me about you instead? What did you do in your village?"

"Uh… Not much?" Kageyama answered honestly, but by the stillness of the smile on Sugawara's face, it wasn't what he wanted to hear?

That night, Kageyama slept underneath the stars on the pallet he stole from the inn, under the small sheet he packed from his house. The clearing they chose was bathed in white-silver moonlight, gleaming against Sugawara's tent. His own tiny hands were greyish underneath the moon when he held them up, looking past the gaps into the sky, rewinding the day in his head. What would make Suga feel more comfortable with him?

" _I know, I know!"_ Hinata bounced. _"Make him breakfast! He looked pretty happy with dinner today!"_

Yeah, Kageyama felt pretty happy seeing Sugawara praising his food.

" _Or talk about something nice_ ," Asahi advised. _"You guys just need to know each other more."_

" _Why am I acting so suspicious though?"_ Suga wondered. _"I'm usually_ much _friendlier than this!"_

" _Well… none of us ever met you during your younger teens, Suga,"_ Daichi pointed out. _"Maybe this is your edgy teen phase you've never talked about?"_

" _I think all I did was listen to angry rock bands when I got moody,"_ Suga reminisced, still sounding bewildered over his counterpart's behaviour.

Kageyama fell asleep curled around the ashes of the campfire facing Sugawara's tent, comforted by their banter.

That night, he didn't dream.

The next morning, when Kageyama mentioned that they were going to join one of the small roads that lead to one of the main roads that led to the Capital (a fact he'd heard from the rare trader that would willingly come up to his village for business), Sugawara looked uncomfortable.

"Do you want to continue camping?" Kageyama asked, confused.

"Yeah, let's do that," Sugawara said in relief, clutching his pack a little tighter, and this time it was Kageyama who slowed, who started piecing the dots together.

When they happened across the next small village, Sugawara drew up his hood and let Kageyama do all the talking. Only after they'd left the village and wandered back into the forest again, ignoring all the nice, easy to tread roads for a birds-eye route towards the Capital instead, did Sugawara draw the hood back down.

The next day, Kageyama woke up early, only to find Sugawara already up. Up, and in a tree, where he was meditating, facing the sunrise. When he noticed Kageyama awake, Sugawara again jumped down – but not from a five metre height this time, but somewhere along the lines of… ten? And he'd walked off as if there was nothing _impressive_ about that fact at all, leather _zori_ silent even among the branches and dry leaves on the ground while Kageyama crunched through every pile, broke every branch on the ground.

The night after, when Kageyama had been pretending to sleep, he watched Suga quietly close his tent, and walk like a shadow by Kageyama's head. Through the smallest crack of his eyes, he watched as Suga didn't climb the tree, but instead took one leap off the ground and ran up it, the last jump letting him reach out and swing onto a thick, sturdy branch near the top of the tree, the branch creaking slowly underneath his weight.

Then to Kageyama's near disbelief, he wrapped the cloak around his head and seemed to disappear, the only indication he'd left from the sudden shake of the branch to one further away, until all Kageyama noticed was the chirping of some bugs in the distance.

The next morning, Sugawara was up on a tree meditating to the sunrise again, like nothing had happened that night. He'd leapt down the tree with a sunny, "Good morning, Kageyama!"

Ignoring the hubbub in his head, Kageyama stifled his questions and greeted back.

On the fifth day, they passed another village, and a village man reached out and touched Sugawara's cloak.

"This is nice fabric," the man, _[Clever-eyed Profiteer]_ stated. "Veery nice. Not from around here, are you? Hmm, the east? Want to trade for it, son?"

"No thank you," Sugawara replied with a grin, before patting Kageyama on the back. "Me and my friend still have a ways to go, you see!" Sugawara laughed, before shrugging. "Believe me, I could use some coin too."

When the man laughed back, Sugawara ushered them both out of the village as quickly as possible. Once half an hour away from it, Sugawara turned to him, eyes tight.

"You say you got a blessing, right? You can see words floating above heads? What did he have?"

Kageyama clutched his fishing pole, uneasy.

"Clever-eyed Profiteer. Why?"

Sugawara didn't answer, just picked up his pace.

And Kageyama followed, eyes trained on the back of his head.

The next day, they were attacked.

* * *

"Hit me," Suga sobbed into his fifth tissue. "Or distract me. Or something. Or at least give me another tissue, this one's already soggy."

Kageyama dug into the pocket of his suit and gave him another tissue, eyes still trained on the vision of Yachi in a white dress, listening to the priest as they prepared to exchange vows. Yachi was beaming enthusiastically forward at the priest, sneaking glances at her husband-to-be. Hinata, defying stereotypes, was her best brides-not-maid, because _'he's my best friend and deserves the spot, girl or not!'_

After the kiss when Yachi and Hinata's eyes found his, when everyone clapped and roared and whistled, Kageyama was already on his feet clapping with all his might, palms already starting to sting, heart swelling for Yachi, one of his two, best, best friends. Suga on his side was struggling to both clap and stem the flow of snot with at least ten tissues on hand. One soggy tissue, he remembered, landed on his shoulder.

Thank goodness the suit was rental, he remembered thinking as he handed a still watery-eyed Suga to Daichi, who only grinned and handed Suga _alcohol_ of all things. Washing his hands of his two sempai, he walked towards his best friends, the bride, Hinata and the groom, determined to congratulate Yachi.

* * *

In the predawn glow of the sky, Sugawara's grey hair seemed almost black, a dull fluffy mop that sat atop his head as he did his usual inventory check. Sitting on the side, Kageyama silently finished the last of the trail mix that Suga had given him, wiping salty fingers on his shirt and cleanly folding the cloth pouch the mix had been in, handing it to Sugawara so that he could finish inventory.

Then the sudden chatter of birds spiraled into the air from the east, a large black swoop before he saw a shockwave approach a large explosion shook the forest, east. He stumbled and dropped to the floor, even as Sugawara quickly rose, his eyes trained on the smoke and the suddenly flock of birds that flew shrieking into the air, the loud cacophony quickly disappearing as the birds dispersed.

"They've come," Sugawara said quietly, face somber. A second of contemplation, before he glanced at Kageyama and kneeled in front of him. "I still don't know if you're a spy or not, but if you are innocent I'm sorry for dragging you into this due to my paranoia," Sugawara said quickly, efficient as he pulled his pack close and pulling a full-sized staff from the bag.

Kageyama tried not to feel surprised that Sugawara apparently had an inter-dimensional pocket in his bag. Sugawara was apparently a ninja so… like, why _not_ have an inter-dimensional pocket-bag?

"This is a staff that was given to me by my mentor, who was also a sage, one blessed like you. If you're really who you say you are, the staff will protect you. If not, then you're more capable than you look, and I don't have to worry." Sugawara finished with a gentle smile and pushed the staff into his hands, before he plunged his arm into his bag and took out something, slipping it into an inside breast pocket just in time for a shadow to flit into the clearing. The shadow cleared unnaturally slowly, revealing a cloaked figure similar to Sugawara's, except… Something felt wrong. Kageyama shivered.

 _[Chaser Assassin],_ his title said. The man underneath grinned.

"I found you, Sugawara. Hand it over."

The mellow smile Sugawara gave the assassin reminded him of days far past, on a court under bright lights and loud cheers, when Suga looked at the opponent's team and gave them that exact same smile. A veneer of friendliness covering hardened, protective, analytical steel.

"Hmm, any chance of you telling me who sent you?" Sugawara asked, rolling his shoulders and jumping a little on the spot to loosen his muscles.

"No. Your time's out."

The first strike came from the assassin, a dark blur of the arm too fast for Kageyama's eyes to follow.

A weapon thrown straight at him. Before Kageyama could even _blink_ , or even go into cardiac arrest from _what is happening what is that a knife_ , Sugawara was in front of him, the (he saw now) shuriken caught between two fingers, and Kageyama was left staring at Sugawara's back as he stood protectively in front of him.

"Wha—"

"Wow, your aim is really bad!" Sugawara interrupted Kageyama cheerfully, addressing the assassin. "I was _waaay_ to the right, you know?" Playfully tossing the shuriken up and down a few times in his hand, Sugawara gave a small contemplative hum before with a snap of his wrist, threw it straight back at the jugular. The attacker cursed, ducking in a whirl of cloth before glancing up and noticing that Sugawara had disappeared up into the trees in one jump, and with a rustle, had left.

"You have what he's carrying, boy?" the man demanded. "This a ploy?"

All Kageyama did was grip the staff tighter. Even if he _did_ know what was happening, it wasn't as if he was going to tell a guy who was obviously trying to kill Suga.

The man shot him a disgusted look. "Tch, useless."

This time, Kageyama barely saw the shuriken, a gleam of silver metal in the darkness that headed straight toward his neck. The man had already moved to follow Sugawara, crouched low, muscles bunching to give chase, when the staff in his hands shook a little, flaring a brilliant azure in his hands. Then in front of Kageyama's amazed eyes, the clearing exploded into blue light just like the time Kiki had first given him his blessing.

Kageyama had half been waiting for the impact and death before noticing the shuriken had frozen in mid-air. The shuriken was actually dropping impossibly slowly, drooping through the blue light like it was viscous, drooping until it landed softly on the ground.

In all of those three seconds, the man had frozen mid-squat, recognition starting to dawn as he looked at the staff, before looking at Kageyama with amazement.

" _Sage,"_ he breathed, near reverent. "An _azure_ sage…" The man's eyes flickered to his face, searching for something before the sharp crack of a branch breaking deeper in the forest echoed like a snap around the forest. The man stopped himself and breathed deep, before turning his back on Kageyama. "I'll return for you later," the man shot back at him, before in one powerful jump, he disappeared into the dark as well, the rustling of leaves the only trace left.

Silence. Kageyama's hands started trembling, remembering the flashes of silver—

 _("Okay, one, two! Breathe, Kageyama!"_ Ennoshita encouraged. _"In, out!"_ )

Kageyama took two deep breaths. In. Out.

In.

Out.

Then he hauled himself onto his feet with the staff, digging it deep into the earth when he wobbled a little too much from shock and adrenaline.

He wasn't a ninja like Sugawara but he wasn't _unfit_. If his heart was going to start racing, then he'd better give it a better reason to do so than _fear_. He took a few seconds to assess his physical condition before setting a good running pace for himself - a habit from his old athlete days - and set off in the direction that the assassin had went.

An explosion rocked the ground, and Kageyama narrowed his eyes and calculated.

 _Towards the sun_ , he thought, adjusting his direction accordingly, _more far away than expected._ No help he could call for either, for they were a day out of any town or village, and the day was still too early for tradesmen to be on the road.

The next explosion bloomed a plume of smoke that rose up from the trees, and Kageyama sped up, heart kicking in his chest, because _he had to be there._ Sugawara had seemed really competent, but at most he was fourteen, and the assassin had looked in his early thirties.

Another crackle of flame, closer but still too far away. Kageyama gritted his teeth and pushed his pace a little faster.

* * *

This was what Suga meant to Kageyama:

A humid Tokyo night, summer stifling. Sugawara, bumping shoulders with Daichi and Asahi. Tsukishima and Yamaguchi behind. Hinata bouncing, yelling, neon lights reflecting into the night.

Kageyama hands in his pockets, half absent-minded over the latest play he wanted to perfect, content to nod.

"You aren't listening to me, Kageyama!" Hinata, the skip in his step slightly lost, and Kageyama floundered, as he always did, as he always tried not to be. Just as he was about to rise to defend himself, Suga glanced back with a laugh on his lips.

"Kageyama's probably just thinking about that game we just saw, Hinata!" Suga grinned at them both, and Hinata brightened up.

"Ooh, which play were you thinking about, Kageyama?" Hinata bubbled, skipping and bouncing along again.

Suga gave him a wink, and Kageyama gave him an awkward twitch of the lips back.

oo

"Congratulations, Suga!" Daichi yelled, and everyone crowded in front of the restaurant. Noya clambered over both him and Tanaka, to launch himself at Suga with a huge shout of "Cheers, Suga-sempai! Congratulations!" Hinata was going to attempt the same before quailing at Kageyama's most poisonous glare. His back _hurt_ dammit, from Noya's elbows.

"Thanks everyone!" Suga yelled back over the din, and they all proceed to fool around for the next twenty minutes instead of doing the sensible thing and file in for their dinner reservation. They figure it out, eventually.

Kageyama approached Suga when the dinner had finished, and everyone was wondering how to get home the fastest way so late.

"Here," Kageyama pressed a gift into Suga's hands, struggling to find more words, but instead ended all of his thoughts with a, "Congratulations. On your. Acceptance."

Kageyama was _not_ blushing in embarrassment, thank you very much.

"Thanks, Kageyama!" Suga, to his surprise, took the present and put it with care on top of a bag already nearly overfull with presents, and drew him into a tight hug. "It means the world to me that you're here!"

"Of course," Kageyama replied. Why wouldn't he? Especially since Hinata and Yachi and everyone else was going to be here too.

Suga's eyes were laughing at him, Kageyama decided. Why?

"Did you have fun?" Suga asked instead, drawing them both back into the most rowdy part of their crowd. Kageyama hummed indecisively in reply, voice quickly swallowed by their friend's laughter.

oo

A door creaking, a hand that switched on the light. Brown eyes full of concern.

"Are you alright, Kageyama?" Kageyama looked up from his corner, a ball of blankets. "Hinata isn't back yet, I'm sorry. Anything… I can do to help?"

Kageyama found it in himself to pull a cushion closer to him, and Suga took the hint and sat down on it, close, but far enough for Kageyama to breathe. Silently, they both watched the moon rise, and then gently fall from its zenith.

* * *

Sugawara meant more that just a constant weekly lunch meeting, nor a constant presence he could rely on to call, or text, or to ask questions of, or to laugh with or laughed at or laugh to. He was more than a flash of a kind smile, an earnest willingness and enthusiasm to help and guide. He was a friend, but not, because someone that he'd let that close a word like _friends_ didn't cut it, because he had built friends, known friends, and Sugawara was a friend but also someone like… a safe harbour. A person that he'd always imagined a big brother would've been like.

This Sugawara wasn't _his_ Suga, even though they were both kind, and they both laughed at Kageyama's sincere attempts at communicating clearly (but not hurtfully, never hurtful). He was weirdly sly, and kept asking Kageyama weird questions, and seemed to have a shady hatred for roads. He could run up trees like a ninja, and had weird fantasy powers, and they'd only known each other for a week but. _But._

Did that even matter?

When Kageyama dived between Sugawara and the assassin, his mind rang with a clear emphatic _no_. It didn't matter that Sugawara was not Suga, that he'd never be Suga, and that he'd never get him back for real. He'd just get to know him again. They'd be the best of friends again. He _will_ get to know Sugawara, no matter what, and that couldn't happen if he was dead.

(" _You know, I'm suddenly not so worried anymore,"_ Suga murmured softly.)

"Back off," Kageyama said to the stranger coldly, gripping the staff Sugawara had given him in between them. A quick glance above his head, "You're not welcome here, _Chaser Assassin_."

"Sage," the assassin immediately leapt back, "you're not involved in this. If you hired this boy to protect you, believe me that after this is done I will gladly escort you wherever you need to go."

Suga behind him scoffed, dragging himself up as carefully as he could. His right leg and arm were both charred black. "Don't believe him. He'll just kidnap you." A wheezy grunt of pain followed.

"Are you okay?" Kageyama asked, holding the staff up and remembering what that feeling was like. The blue light that protected him had been… warm, in a pins and needly way of _I don't want to die_ adrenaline fueled rush.

 _I don't want Suga to die,_ Kageyama told the staff silently, squinting to see if it had started glowing yet. _Please_ , he belatedly added, when he saw the assassin had drawn his arms back for a throw. _More explosives are coming, I think._

The staff paused for a minute before starting a stuttering humming glow, blue bleeding through his fingers before spreading out through the entire clearing, covering him and Sugawara in the blue light.

The humming in his fingers tingled when the man paused at the light, throwing a small bomb to test its effect. When all the bomb did was slow down in mid-air and slowly drop towards the ground like the shuriken from before, he dipped low and ran headlong into Kageyama's spherical bubble of light, veering around him for a shot at Sugawara. The moment he touched the light though, the assassin froze in mid-jump.

Eyes widening comically slowly, the assassin immediately backed up until he'd extracted himself and stood a few metres away into the trees to avoid his glow, narrowed eyes glaring at the blue staff in Kageyama's hands.

Well, Kageyama reflected, this was going surprisingly well. _Thank you_ , he thought at the staff, because he wasn't brought up without manners.

"Leave," Kageyama then insisted.

In reply, the assassin sat on his haunches beyond the light of his staff, trying to wait him out.

To be fair, the humming in hands was getting harder to hold. The light was already shrinking from its previous diameter. Kageyama risked a glance at Sugawara, who had hauled himself into a kneeling position, face in a grimace of pain, fingers shaking against his knees, and with Kageyama being the tiny twelve year he was right now, they wouldn't be running anywhere anytime soon. He couldn't fight either. He'd never punched anybody wanting to _harm_ them before.

"Sugawara," Kageyama asked. "Is this blue thing magic?" He shook the glowing blue staff as emphasis.

Curious brown eyes analysed him, before Sugawara replied. "Yes, it is," Sugawara stated slowly. "But Kageyama, we both know you can't hold this for long – you can leave me behind if you want."

At that, Kageyama just turned around and ignored the rest of Sugawara's speech (as if he'd leave him behind), and wrapped his mind around this new knowledge that apparently he could do _magic_.

If he could do magic with this staff, he could… probably do other spells as well. The only spell he'd ever heard Suga do was the firepit one though.

Fos?

Maybe he could… light the guy's cloak on fire or something. That seemed like something he could do. Could something like this become bigger too?

" _Remember that the fire is just a chemical reaction, Kageyama!"_ Yamaguchi suddenly piped up in his head. _"Combustion is just applying enough heat to decompose materials, that then release chemicals, which then interact with oxygen, which emits heat, and oh no, I'm not explaining this very well but um. Fire is self-sustaining, so just make sure you have enough heat and fuel and it should do the rest by itself! Suga never had fuel, so you probably treat umm, magic as the fuel. And then use magic as heat, to heat up the magic fuel. Since it's all just magic, you can probably direct it anywhere, so make sure to focus in the direction of the assassin, okay?"_ Yamaguchi heaved a deep breath afterwards before stuttering, " _You got that, right? I mean, I hope you did."_

Yeah, he did.

" _Wow, amazing, Yamaguchi!" Tanaka claps. "You've been thinking about this a lot, huh?"_

Sounded complicated though.

" _Stop complaining, Bakayama,"_ Hinata's voice loud like a whack to his head. " _Other-Suga is depending on you!"_

The blue light was thinning, but still there like a filled up water bubble, and magic was probably the hum of weird tingles in his arms so… what? Imagine?

That sounded stupid.

" _Just DO IT!_ " Came a simultaneous yell, and Kageyama readied his staff in front of him.

Alright, alright, he told the voices in his head.

So… he looked at the staff in his hands. Imagine the magic around him as fuel, and direct it towards the assassin, and then heat it up? Furrowing his brows, Kageyama _pushed_. Instantly, all the fading blue light still floating in the shrinking sphere around him became a thick beam of blue that swung towards the assassin. For heat, Kageyama took a split second to imagine the campfire, the flash of light, the small satisfied smile Suga had when he murmured his spell as the kindling lit up, crackling dry. Hot summer nights, the heat of a stove as it cooked something, the warm swathe of yellow light as a door opened late at night, the flash of an orange-tinted smile.

"Fos!" Kageyama yells, imagining _heatheatheat_ , and immediately the stranger slackened his stance in surprise, forgetting to dodge the blue light as he stared at Kageyama in disbelief.

"What, you're threatening me with that useless campfire spell?"

Anything extra was cut off, because a huge fireball erupted from the end of Kageyama's glowing staff, eating up the trail of blue light in half a second, hitting the assassin and continuing into the forest, lighting up the morning into a blaze of blue-white that even had Kageyama blinking from sudden tears. The assassin had been hit slightly as he dodged and thrown into a nearby tree, and Kageyama soon smelled the faint smell of burnt meat.

The assassin took a glance at the fireball still continuing burning trek and at Kageyama standing in front of Sugawara, staff in hand and already summoning another wave of blue light. With a small dip of his staff, the runes immediately lit up with azure light again, and the air in front of Kageyama shimmered.

With a curse, the assassin disappeared into the forest.

Then all that was left was Kageyama, Sugawara, and a huge trail of burning trees that… didn't seem to be extinguishing itself out anytime soon, if Kageyama's squinting was correct.

A burning branch snapped and fell to the ground. Somewhere in the distance, a tree groaned as its bark was burnt and licked by flames, splitting and cracking.

 _("Whooooo! You did it, Kageyama! Fire! Fire! Fire! Go, Yamaguchi! Yay!"_ Hinata celebrated in his head.)

However, Kageyama stared at the unholy destruction he had wrought, before shuddering into himself from shame and whirling himself around.

"I'm sorry!' He immediately yells at Sugawara behind him, who was staring blankly at the burgeoning forest fire himself, face pale. "I didn't mean to do that! Really!"

"It's um, its okay, Kageyama," Sugawara said to him, his smile stuttering from pain. Kageyama immediately dropped the staff and hovered around the wound. Second degree burns, maybe? Probably? Was it numb? "We should probably get away from here though, just in case?"

"Are you okay?" Kageyama twitched his hands closer, stopping a few centimetres from skin. Burns need to cool down, right? Release some of the heat? Water?

"It'll be fine if we get back to our camp since I got some stuff for burns," Sugawara said. "Here, give me the staff for my right hand, and you can come under my left, and we'll hobble back, okay?" Kageyama nodded with determination, and handed over the staff so that Suga could carefully leverage himself up, while Kageyama ducked underneath Sugawara's left arm, a surprise huff of breath coughing out when Sugawara leant more weight on him than expected. Those muscles weren't for show. He was _heavy_.

"Yes, that's fine!" Kageyama gritted out, frowning at the direction that the camp was at. This must be nothing compared to what Sugawara was feeling. "Let's go!"

Kageyama, intensely scouring for any forest debris that might trip them both, missed the curious look Sugawara sent him as they hobbled back.

* * *

When they settled down back to their bags, Sugawara promptly found a first aid kit, and underneath Kageyama's amazed eyes, most of the damage disappeared when Sugawara mumbled something into some smooth bandages and rubbed the suddenly wet cloth over his burnt leg and arm.

"That's amazing!" Kageyama enthused, trying not to clap. Sugawara shot him an amused grin, before wrapping bandages over the affected areas (the skin was still a bit pink, Kageyama noted. Did that mean whatever healing he did wasn't complete?) and hauled his pack on his back again.

"We need to leave, Kageyama. More might come," Sugawara said softly, and Kageyama nodded before holding his own small sack and fishing pole, and ran to catch up with Sugawara, who had already forged forward in the opposite direction of the burning clearing.

Kageyama was busy staring at the sunrise (a warm orange) when Sugawara broke the silence.

"Thank you for saving me."

Kageyama looked at him in surprise, before shaking his head furiously. "It was no problem, Sugawara!"

"I owe you a life-debt," Sugawara just replied mildly. "That's a pretty big thing in my family. First, I'll give you that staff you used before, okay? Then request anything you want of me, and I'll do it to the best of my ability."

Kageyama stopped in his tracks.

" _Think before you say anything. Breathe."_

"I… didn't save you so that you could give me things," Kageyama decided to say, slowly. His fingers gripped his potato sack tighter. "A… a thanks is enough."

Sugawara was definitely staring at him curiously now, considering him like he was a complex puzzle, and Kageyama set his mouth in a solid, determined line. As Hinata had complained in the past, he could out stubborn _everyone_.

"A life-debt is still a debt," Sugawara said, after a period of silence from both of them, in which Kageyama refused to give and Sugawara waited for an answer. "Even if you don't accept it, to me it's a matter of honour, okay? Give me that, at least?"

Kageyama breathed.

"Okay. I have one request."

Sugawara smiled, satisfied. "What is it? I will do my best to fulfill it."

The request was embarrassing though, and so extremely _cheesy_. Kageyama started marching forward, eyes averted to the side and tried to reason out that this was _Suga,_ who had once known everything about him, so there was no shame to be felt! Right?

Sugawara trailed behind now, looking somewhat bemused.

"…be my friend?" Kageyama finally muttered, trailing off embarrassingly at the end. He'd meant to sound at least somewhat assertive! Ugh. Kageyama refused to stop marching forward and instead sped up when Sugawara paused, and it was quite a while before Sugawara's light footsteps caught back up to him again, a hand on his shoulder wrenching him backwards.

"Wait, wait, wait. Kageyama. By that you mean like, you want my loyalty? Or my life? Or something?" Sugawara's face filled his vision as he was twirled around, and Kageyama just scowled at hearing those things. What was Suga's _life_ like here? "You don't want me to agree with your every whim?" Sugawara continued to blather, and Kageyama was horrified at the very thought, starting to get _super_ suspicious and concerned about Sugawara's life.

Did people extort him? Was he part of the yakuza? Was that why assassins were after Suga?

"No! None of that!" Kageyama replied, shifting his stare over Sugawara's shoulder when all the other boy did was give him his an intimidating incredulous look. Trying to shift backwards, he was stopped by Sugawara's hand, whose grip was rock solid. "Just… be my friend. And do friend things. You don't have to _listen_ to me all the time, that's stupid."

Then he started sweating when all Sugawara did examine him again, all _smart_ and _calculative_ and guh. He wasn't used to confronting Suga, because no-one liked to anger Suga, because an _angry Suga was extremely scary_.

(" _Tell me about it,"_ Daichi grumbled.)

(" _Oh, thank you, Kageyama!"_ Suga chuckled. _"That was actually quite flattering!")_

Ignoring the voices, Kageyama braved to inch his gaze up to look at Sugawara's eyes. Guh. Still so _analytical._ Kageyama quickly glanced away again, and stared at… the sunrise. What a beautiful sunrise it was today. Marvellous, especially if he ignored all the smoke from the small forest fire he was refusing to think about. Stunning backdrop.

A few moments later, Sugawara finally let go of his shoulders, before patting Kageyama on the shoulder.

"Kageyama, okay, I'll be your friend. So, first thing as your friend, let me give you this staff!" Sugawara shoved the staff into his hands, plucking the fishing pole and the small sack off him in the process. "And I'll take care of these, because I have a perfectly good bag that will hold all of this without adding weight."

Kageyama watched as Suga stuffed the whole pole and the sack into his large backpack, and felt bewildered when Sugawara shot him a pure _Suga_ smile at him.

"Wha—?" was all Kageyama was able to say before Sugawara winked.

"I take my friendships very seriously, Kageyama Tobio. Now, are you going to accept my gift or not? I'll be _really hurt_ if you don't though?"

Kageyama gripped the staff a little tighter. The staff already felt familiar to his hand somehow, and it was hard not to feel fond of something when it had saved your life a few times.

Sugawara nodded in approval before cheerfully dragging the other boy forwards with him. "Now, let's get to know one another. How old are you, Kageyama?"

"Twelve. Umm… you?" Kageyama ventured, wriggling his arm so that it was more comfortable, tucked against Sugawara's elbow. Sugawara glanced down at him in surprise.

"Twelve? But you look… Nah, wait. I'm fourteen years old, if you want to know. So, two years older than you, huh." Sugawara tapped his chin absentmindedly, before shrugging. "Eh, whatever. So what did you do with the assassin out there? I mean, even _I've_ never seen such a large application of _fos_ before. It's like… the second most minor fire spell in existence. I didn't even know it was possible! How'd you do it?"

Kageyama, having promptly used the staff as a walking stick, traced the intricate carved whorls on the wood and thought back. The first time was because he didn't want to die. The second time was because…

"Because of you," Kageyama finished, stepping over a large root. He hadn't want Suga to die.

Sugawara laughed incredulously, voice momentarily drowning out even the small forest fire burning behind them, the sudden burst of sound enough to make a bird angrily squawk at them and fly off. Then he nudged Kageyama in the shoulder. Ow. That was unexpectedly bony. "Okay, no joking. Seriously, how?"

Immediate disbelief… Kageyama didn't know enough about magic to know _why_ it was so weird though. And when he looked at Sugawara, all he did was smile and did a _go on_ gesture and waited. And if he knew Suga as well as he did, Sugawara wouldn't let it rest until he got _something_.

His answer wasn't a lie though. What to do.

" _Use my explanation, Kageyama,"_ Yamaguchi encouraged. _"I'll go over it with you, if you want. Suga seems like he wants something more sciency anyway."_ Kageyama nodded, before freezing and rubbed his nose and tried his best to seem like he wasn't talking to the voices in his head in front of Sugawara.

Good impression, good impression, good impression…

"I watched you light the campfires," Kageyama explained, gesturing a little. "Fire needs fuel and heat and oxygen. I though magic could be the fuel, and _fos_ was obviously fire related and probably heated things up." Then he stopped and awkwardly shrugged. "That's it. You couldn't move, and I had to do something."

Sugawara adjusted his backpack clearly in thought, before giving a small chuckle.

"Mysteries will be mysteries, I guess. Say, Kageyama. Want me to teach you magic? We still have a few weeks of hiking until we get to the Capital anyway."

Kageyama stopped watching the passing forest mulch, incredulous. "Even though I started a forest fire?"

"Yup. Whaddya say?"

"Yes!" Came Kageyama's exuberant reply, with no hesitation at all. "When do we get started? What do I need to prepare?" Kageyama's mind bubbled with excitement, because magic was probably what let Sugawara jump into trees and do ninja-ey stuff right? That would be so great!

"Woah, slow down, Kageyama!" Suga patted his shoulder. "We'll start at dinner, is that alright?" Kageyama nodded earnestly, before setting forward with more determination. This time, instead of awkward silence and a closed off hood as he lead the way, Sugawara made the effort to match his strides and babbled random facts about the forest as they passed. That hole in the tree indicated that woodpeckers lived around the area, the amount of dried poop around showed that there was probably a nest of rabbits around somewhere close. Kageyama just listened to all this with his most studious face (it wasn't constipated, no matter what Hinata said, dammit).

He was going to grip this inch that Sugawara gave him, and take a _mile_.

" _Hehe, getting attached already, Suga?"_ Asahi teased later on that day, when Sugawara looked at Kageyama's failing attempts to catch fish from the river and roasted an extra three that he gave all to Kageyama.

Suga grinned in his mind. _"Knew I'd come around sooner rather than later."_

* * *

Kageyama reminiscing that night lead to him to an old memory, one of a still blundering-in-life Suga.

In his memories... He'd always looked up to Suga. First, in a peripheral-sempai way. Later, in a human-being way.

Suga wasn't without his flaws though. Working too hard been one of them.

Once, Kageyama stayed out a lot later than usual because Suga had run late, so late that the café waitress had come over with a small sympathetic smile and gave him a free tea, on the house. After sipping that as slowly as possible and still seeing no Suga rushing through the door with an apologetic smile on his face, Kageyama paid for the extra tea when he scanned the café and saw the waitress busy with another customer before hunching into his coat into the early evening. He hurried down streets, walking past his usual bus stop and turned right at the strange two-branched tree, down five doors to a smaller, worn apartment building.

The guard that day recognised Kageyama, as he punched in the building's pin and the doors opened. When the man gave him a kind smile, he bowed back politely before moving up the stairs to the second floor. Carefully looked for the right door, just in case (Room 218) and knocked loudly.

Inside, there was a bang and a yelp, before there was a scrabble of fingers struggling with the lock and a sleepy Sugawara was staring up at Kageyama before his eyes widened in horror.

"Kageyama, is it time already? Oh no, I'm horribly late, aren't I?" Suga groaned, glancing at the clock he hung above the tiny kitchenette he had. "I'm really sorry, Kageyama. Want to come in?"

"It's fine, Suga-san," Kageyama said even as he noted how haggard Suga looked this time, with deeper eyebags than usual, and his grey hair a little oily and bedraggled compared to its usual impeccable style. "I got worried when you didn't come. Excuse me." Kageyama stepped inside and toed off his shoes, wiggling his toes a little in contemplation before looking Suga in the eye. "You look tired."

"Ahaha, is it that obvious?" Suga laughed, voice dry. "It's been a rough week. I was about to head out, I promise! I think I dropped off when I was trying to do some last minute reading…"

"Its fine," Kageyama reiterated, watching Suga walk down the small hallway to sit on the floor, where there were numerous books laid out. "Is there anything I can help with? Not that," Kageyama backtracked, "I can't help much with academics but. I wish. To help." Kageyama finally snapped his mouth shut, meaning sufficiently conveyed.

Then he continued to stand in the hallway, arms straight down his sides, staring at the lightbulb.

Suga's familiar, fond chuckle. Something loosened in his chest when he heard it, and Kageyama let himself look lower to see Sugawara had propped his chin with one hand, looking bemused.

"Oh, Kageyama," was all he said, before he waved Kageyama over, filling the silence with gossip about his week in university. The tutor was being unreasonable again, his group-mates being phenomenal, and the work he was being swamped with since mid-sems were coming. "I'm prepped enough though," Suga said as he poured tea for the both of them, before booting up his computer. "The only thing I need to do is to watch this video on this study about the effect of natural noises on the human psyche…"

Kageyama perked up, swallowing his tea. "Let's watch it together!"

Suga raised an eyebrow. "You know that it's just going to be an hour of people talking about whale noises or something, right?"

"I like whales," Kageyama insisted earnestly.

"Ahaha, alright! Lemme find the link, Kageyama."

They settled next to each other, listening to the voice coming out slightly tinny out of the speakers and Kageyama fell asleep in the first half-hour. When he got woken up after the video had ended, it was to Suga's knowing grin and two cups of instant ramen. Dinner was slurping cheap noodles to some stupid videos that Suga had loaded in the background for noise, sitting cross-legged surrounded by reference books Kageyama half-understood. When he left, Sugawara looked a little less haggard and he patted himself on a job well done.

* * *

 _Extras:_

 _Suga's actually not really that patient – unless he knows them and acknowledged them as a friend. Then the patience usually multiplies by 10000x as he nods and grins and complains about how dumb the problems are in his head instead. He's patient, of course, if the topics are not_ too _stupid. Kageyama, fortunately, had always stayed juuuuust within the 'not-that-stupid' range because Suga realises perfectly that Kageyama doesn't_ mean _to do most of the things he does, they just sometimes_ happen. _To Suga's chagrin and slight pride, he is one of the people Kageyama reaches out to the most._

 _Suga likes spicy food, to the point that Kageyama absorbed the recipe to mapo tofu through sheer proximity._

 _Suga realised early on that one of the main reasons why Kageyama has difficulty socialising is that he never speaks his whole mind, only the tail end of his thoughts. Kageyama explained this as since his logic is obvious, everyone probably only needs the end, right? Suga, in all his efforts to change this over the years, has never succeeded._

 _When Suga watches his high-school group of friends, sometimes he gets overly sentimental about how amazing it is that he met such a great (dorky) bunch of people early in life. He then covers this up by punching Daichi's shoulder and wise-cracking. Daichi bears the punches in long-suffering stoicness._

 _Although he doesn't look it, and doesn't act like it, Suga is surprisingly messy in weird places. Room, check. Closet, nightmare. Desk, looks alright. Drawers in desk, black hole. (Basically, he's a mess in all the places that can't be seen easily). On the other hand, Kageyama is neat in all aspects of his life. He just doesn't understand why things should be messy when being clean is so convenient._

 _After Suga started living alone he realised he hated laundry, so he keeps on mismatching his socks because he doesn't bother to pair them. As he figures that they are socks and no-one really sees them anyway, he just wears them mismatched all the time._


	3. The Case of Sugawara Koushi

**The Case of Sugawara Koushi**

Sugawara's first memory, first clear memory, is of dark shadows, of an iron tang in his mouth. He'd been led into a line that stood before a figure seated in a large chair, shivering in his night clothes as he stared at their clan leader. His bare feet shuffled back when he thought the leader was going to look at him, nearly stumbling into another four year old. They pushed him back up, so that he stood in line again, in wait, in the relative silence. The leader was a black shadow that moved to the side of the room to the first in line, working down the room until he was to his direct right, holding a crystal ball expectantly to the boy on his right, a nameless cousin. His cousin held his breath as he put his hand on the ball.

The room was so _cold_. And underneath his bare foot, he felt the crustiness of dried blood. One part of himself cringed, but he couldn't shuffle away because the leader was right there, his cold navy eyes gleaming as he appraised his cousin before breathing heavily, impatient and annoyed.

"Say _spitha_ ," the leader ordered, and his cousin did. There was no response from the crystal, not even the smallest of sparks. The leader frowned, and even though it wasn't even directed at him Sugawara hunched into his yukata, feeling small and hunted.

"Say _othis_ ," the leader ordered next. His cousin took a trembling breath, and did.

No response. His cousin didn't even have a chance to pale, to look up, before his neck was slashed by the leader's other hand, holding the crystal high as he did so to protect it from any spray from the blood. The corpse crumpled sideways and his hand landed on Sugawara's foot, still warm. His fingers were twitching on his skin before they lay still, and even though Sugawara wanted to scream and kick the hand away, he forced himself to look up. The leader still looked slightly bored and annoyed, as he grimaced at the blood that had splattered his sleeve. Stepping over his cousin's leg, the leader looked at Sugawara next, blue eyes hooded, sleeves dripping red. He offered the crystal. Sugawara breathed in another lungful of metal air that only made him sick, and put his hand on the crystal.

"Say _spitha_ ," the leader ordered.

"Spitha," Sugawara echoed. The crystal gave a tiny spark in the middle, a dim red flicker that died as quickly as it lit. The leader frowned.

"Say _othis_."

Heart thundering in his chest, Sugawara trembled it out. _"Othis_."

The crystal burnt a bright scarlet red, a swelling of light that nearly lit up the entire room with its glow. Underneath it, Sugawara felt burning relief because he passed whatever this was, and he could see the whole room stir as all the boys on his left shuffled to stare at him. He could hear people on the balconies spectating whispering in a roar, and Sugawara inexplicably felt a rush of pride even, at doing something so well.

And then he looked up, and all his pride died. The leader was smiling, his bored expression gone as a grin twisted his face from ear to ear. His eyes glinted underneath heavy brows. "A talent, I see," the leader purred. "Good, good. I expect much from you in the future."

The hand that caressed his cheek left bloodstains that Sugawara secretly sneaked away to scrub clean later that night. Bending over the small basin from the well, he bit his lip as he tried not to think of the cartful of small bodies he'd passed when he was led out of the building.

* * *

" _Othis_ ," Sugawara muttered, feeling the _qi_ burn through his veins in response to his command, igniting his body as he glanced at his target, a man in his middle-twenties who was clumsily arranging the flowers he'd brought for his wife into a vase. During the week that Sugawara had watched the mark, he'd been preparing for the anniversary by memorising a book of traditional poetry that he mumbled underneath his breath even now.

Prolonging it any longer would be dangerous, and so with a sigh Sugawara flickered through the window and into the room, registering the pleasant scent of the expensive candles that the target had bought. It was the wife's favourite – the scent of slight chrysanthemum honey wafted through the air. The nobleman was humming idly, having thoughtlessly strangled a few flowers in his attempts at beauty.

He noticed Sugawara's shadow behind him too late, only letting a small gasp through his lips before Sugawara drove his tantō from the back of the neck into his brain. Immediate death, a clean slice. When Sugawara checked his pulse, he assured himself that the target felt no pain. He'd done it perfectly.

When Sugawara presented the chopped ear to his master, she nodded in acknowledgement and slid the ear into a box for preservation. Then she smiled at him.

"Dependable as always. Did you prolong the death of the target as our Emperor wished?"

"Yes," Sugawara replied, head down. His long hair hid his face from his master when she gave him a genteel, distant hug. The door wasn't shut after all.

"Good job. Get your dinner from the mess hall, you deserve it."

"Yes," Sugawara replied.

A week later, Sugawara visited the nobleman's house in funeral robes and attended his honorary walk, eyes trained on the noblewoman inside the carriage. In her hands was the copy of the poetry book her husband had been planning to recite to her, with a few chrysanthemums. At the end of the procession, Sugawara made his way to the noblewoman and gave her a small bunch of peonies that he'd foraged around the mountains for that morning. Although the guards stopped him at first, the noblewoman smiled down at his small offering.

"Bravery?" She smiled at him as she accepted the flowers, small and weary. "What a sweet boy you are. You're very young to know hanakotoba. Thank you."

Sugawara didn't return her smile, but bowed deeply before walking away.

* * *

"We only serve the Emperor!" The leader shouted at the front of the room, his face twisted into an ferocious snarl as he continued to yell. "We serve where other factions can't, to help our country of Wu to become the great country it once was!"

Sugawara watched from the side as all the members of their clan roared in approval, before silently leaving when the leader started his impassioned speech again. As much as it was supposed to be inspiring, all Sugawara felt was a faint feeling of annoyance at how _loud_ all of these gatherings were. Why did they have to yell all the time?

The corridor outside the meeting room was suitably warmer and sunnier, with a hint of fresh brine from the sea nearby freshening the air. At how refreshed he felt just be breathing in some sunnier air, Sugawara wondered why the leader always liked his rooms all cold and musty. Not to mention the unhygienic bloodstains that the leader sometimes liked to leave around the room for 'atmospheric purposes'. Really. He was _eight_ and even he'd learnt all the icky stuff that was in blood and other bodily fluids.

(He couldn't help but think the leader was kind of stupid).

Halfway to the kitchens for a sneaky snack, Sugawara was stopped by a hand to his shoulder.

"Not listening to the leader's speech?" asked his master's smooth voice. "Why?"

"He says the same thing all the time," Sugawara answered, turning fast enough to catch his master smother a small flicker of amusement.

"True that," she answered. "He likes the attention, if you really want my opinion." His master brushed her hair behind her shoulder, one of the only things he'd seen her care about really. With a twinkle in her eye, she gave him a rare, honest grin. "Don't worry, I won't tell him about you ditching his speech, so you owe me, okay?"

Sugawara smiled at her in thanks. "Well, you're ditching too," he pointed out. His master wrinkled her nose.

"True," she answered, before gave him a side-eye, the tilt of her mouth sly. "Then I won't tell him that you visited your last target's grave with flowers." Sugawara's open-mouthed look of surprise made her laugh. "Of _course_ I know, you're my charge. I don't just handle your cases, I handle _you_. But you know," she raised an eyebrow. "Daffodils? Really?"

Sugawara shrugged her hand off his shoulder and grumbled. "He deserves it. Respect that is. Also," Sugawara thought of the flower field that he usually found his flowers from, "they're in season and easy to get."

His master looked at him, her face ever in a smile. This time though… Her brown eyes were clouded, as if she was staring at something behind him instead of at _him_. His master was, in his opinion, one of the smarter (if not smartest) mid-level apprentices in their whole clan. She _never_ let her guard down, something she always hammered into Sugawara too.

"What's wrong?" Sugawara asked, tilting his head in thought, slightly concerned.

"How old were you again, Sugawara?" His master asked, as if she didn't have to know all his personal details by heart. "Eight?" He nodded, wondering where this was going. "Eight, and you still ask me what's wrong like you care. What a stupid nugget you are," she mused, patting him on the head. "Go, the kitchen has some mochi today. They made two extra, so nab them both and give me one later, yeah?"

After shooting back a " _you're_ the nugget," at his master, Sugawara obediently trotted off, confused as to what all that was about. His master never had that look on when she wasn't plotting something.

* * *

Another week, another target. Sugawara tied his grey hair back, and dropped down. His fingers found soft skin. The bright, colourful robes of the child were made of soft silk, something he noted as he arranged the corpse into a dignified position to be found.

Sugawara had found a chance when the child, curious and playful, had wandered too far into the gardens and most importantly, out of sight of his caretaker. It was easy enough then, to wrap a hand over his mouth, an arm around his neck and _twist_. A series of soft pops, then a crack. Sugawara held on for a few more seconds, before wiping the spit off his hand on the child's shoulder and laying him down, avoiding the frozen blue eyes in the kid's face. Using his tantō, he cut off an ear as their clan's official signature, and wiped the blood off his tantō on the child's shoulder too.

Although he didn't know if this feeling was called _sad_ , he did know _tired_. His master had called it _compassion_ though, said it was a good thing but he should hide it from the other apprentices. So when he felt it again staring at this little boy's face, he tucked it into the place behind his heart. It wasn't this little boy's fault his father was plotting against the emperor after all.

In the distance, he heard the boy's caretaker calling his name. _"Shouta_ ," the caretaker called, unworried but getting closer.

Sugawara swallowed, and with a murmur of _othis_ , he jumped over the wall and was gone.

* * *

"Your master is calling for you," called a voice from the door and Sugawara swung his feet off his bunk with a groan. His fellow apprentice grimaced in sympathy but didn't stick around, trotting off to deliver more messages probably.

His muscles sore from yesterday's training, Sugawara wound his way down to his master's room and didn't wait to knock before walking in. Sunlight immediately blinded him nearly, stepping out from the dim decor from the majority of the fortress. His master's room he'd always personally thought was more tasteful than many of the others – she had a window that faced the sea, for one, that faced the sunset, a few pot plants that she'd dug from random missions that she liked to keep and a wall tapestry depicting a crow flying over an artsy depiction of a twisted tower.

(Much better than bloodstains, stupid leader).

His master raised an eyebrow at his lack of manners when Sugawara didn't announce himself but shrugged it off. Part of what he loved about her, really. Any other master would've had him punished.

"Sugawara," she called, waving him over with a distracted hand. "I know you just finished your last mission a few days ago and you're due a rest, but I specially nabbed this mission for you."

When Sugawara approached, she pointed to a scroll on her desk which he picked up and read. "An important dignitary from Chou?" Sugawara read out loud. Chou was Wu's western neighbour, but also much, much smaller than their own country. Also, their clan usually dealt with _internal_ affairs. He'd never left Wu before. "What's so special about this?"

His master carefully stopped writing, putting down her pencil. Then, with a mutter of _kinis_ and a wave of her hand, the door shut loudly behind him, making the secrecy wards slide out of the walls and automatically lock in place. The room was immediately silent except for their breathing, as Sugawara grew even more concerned. He was basically fodder - he'd never gotten a mission that ever needed the wards before.

Under his worried fretting, his master breathed out a sigh before steepling her fingers under her chin, eyes boring into his.

"The leader and the higher ups don't know who Chou is sending as a dignitary," his master told him, frankly. "They just know that for the Emperor's Coming of Age, they have to send someone of great political value or it'll be an insult. The Emperor used this logic to decide that he wanted to kill the dignitary before he even comes over to our borders. This'll deal a blow to Chou without having to bother with any political mess after they arrive and we're tasked to _protect_ the dignitary instead. Since apparently every other division is busy, the Emperor gave his mission to us. Since everyone thinks Chou is going to send some squishy dignitary over, this mission is ranked quite low. So I grabbed it for you."

Sugawara blinked, not used to all this information being sent his way. Usually it was just 'here's the dude you have to kill today,' and he'd leave.

"Uh... Okay. But why _me?_ " Sugawara asked, thinking longingly of the three days of rest he was supposed to get after every mission. His bed. It was calling.

His master rolled her eyes, obviously knowing what he was thinking. "As I said, the higher-ups don't know who the dignitary is yet, so they just let whoever picked it up first have it," his master said patiently. "Unlike them though, I know who the target is."

Sugawara stilled. He'd long suspected his master had ulterior contacts, but having this blatantly confirmed was... surprising at best. No-one should put their guard down, and his master knew it best.

 _How do you know?_ Was Sugawara's first question. Second, _why are you telling me this?_

"Your target is a very powerful person," she continued. "When you inevitably fail and he arrives in Wu, they'll presume you dead because no-one like _us_ can defeat this man. That's why I took it for you."

His master smiled at him after she said all that, as if she didn't just blatantly say she was _sending him to his death_. And here he thought she _liked_ him.

And he couldn't refuse. If he did, he'd get culled.

"Who is it?" He asked, paling, as she just kept smiling.

"Chou is sending their Great Sage, the Sage Nekomata, blessed by Prithvi," she replied simply.

Sugawara's mind took a moment to process what his master just said, because _sage_? Those legends, who were blessed by the gods, walked in their name, and wielded their power? They were so powerful that most books referred to them as another _species_. Although sages were seen as humans, the older they grew, the more power they held. Nekomata was widely known to be more than a hundred years old.

Sugawara gulped. "You want me to die?"

"No, I don't," his master immediately shook her head. "I want you to escape from here. Only the leader and I know your name, and the leader doesn't remember anyone's names anyway," she said light-heartedly, as if what she was saying wasn't the _most treasonous thing ever._ "This one of the few missions you'll get to leave Wu. So leave, do this mission, and once you meet the Great Sage ask him one thing. Tell him to change your divine name _._ After that, _never_ come back to Wu. Never cross the borders. Don't look back." She paused, and stared expectantly at Sugawara as if he'd be able to process this all at once. Could process an offer of _(freedom, dare he think it?)_ just like... that.

His master though, was having none of his dawdling. "Do you understand?" She demanded, tone sharpening.

Sugawara had learnt the clan's techniques like a duck to water – all those lessons told him that she wasn't lying.

Why him though? Why now?

 _(But Sugawara had learnt early to never look at a gift-horse's mouth)_

"What about you?" Sugawara managed to ask, his brain whispering _treason this is treason report her disloyalty needs to be culled_ even as hope bloomed in his chest. His master's eyes gentled from her hard smile, reaching out a hand to pat Sugawara's head, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like ' _stupid nugget'_ under her breath.

"You're the nugget," he whispered back as he clutched the mission scroll closer to his chest. And of course his master didn't miss that, having always been sharper, kinder, and more aware than the rest.

He...he _worried._ They were all each other had.

"Hey, I'll tell you a secret," his master suddenly interrupted his thinking. "My name. It's Michimiya."

Sugawara's eyes flew up. "What are you doing? If you give me your name, you'll—"

"I trust you. It's what friends do, I've heard," she cut him off, smile wry.

 _Friend?_ He's heard the term used before, between fellow apprentices before they got inevitably backstabbed for the leader's favour. It didn't seem like that was what Michimiya was offering here though. Her smile reminded him of all the descriptions within the books he sneakily read when he was out on missions, of friendships that grew from loyalty.

How old was she? Sugawara wondered for the first time. She looked at most like she was fifteen. Soon, she would be fully initiated. She wouldn't be able to…

"Go," Michimiya nodded, as another mutter of _kinis_ opened the door and Sugawara felt all the secrecy wards fade back into the walls. "Good luck," she continued, sounding disinterested and distant again, picking up her pencil.

Sugawara stared at her, indecision in his steps before one long silent glare from Michimiya made him leave her behind, scratching another report at her desk. He dared to glance back before he left the room, one small self-indulgent look.

If all succeeded, he wouldn't ever see her again. That morning, she had a small dark ponytail slung low on her neck, heart-shaped face looking down at her stack of reports with determination. Like everyone within their clan, she wore black but gave herself distinction with a small red flower pin in her hair. Behind her, the smiley faces she drew on her flower-pots mocked him as the words he wanted to say got stuck in his throat. _Come with me_ , he didn't say. _Goodbye_ he couldn't say.

Without the wards, he couldn't even say any sort of thank you.

Sugawara went back to his locker to change, wrapping his arms and legs tight and tucking the ends neatly in. His hood went up next, and as he tucked the mission scroll into his pouch along with his supplies, he engraved the memory of her deep into his heart.

The window that he preferred leaving their fortress from had the best view of the sweeping coastline that their fortress was built on – the sea's gleam at the edge of the horizon, curving around the island that their base of operations worked off, built into a mess of sea crags and cliffs. The mainland was connected to their island by a secret tunnel whose entrance was hidden behind a booby-trapped cave. Chou, he knew, was a land-locked country. The sea was something he wouldn't see for a long time.

"… _Othis."_

Then he left, flickering out and landing heavily onto the ground with two rolls, before leaping forward, not daring to look behind.

* * *

Chou was known for its position as a hub of commerce and culture, its wide, well-maintained roads and burgeoning technological revolution that promised the integration of magic into its machinery had created a new era of prosperity for the country. It was also known for its stability through the risings of two Demon Kings, having sustained no major damage despite both calamities. Because of this, Chou's economy was one of the strongest and most developed within the continent, while its non-aggression policy led the country to rarely be attacked by other nations.

But the main reason, the largest reason for Chou's peace was the choice of the Great Sage Nekomata, decades back, to settle within the country as his home. His presence alone made all countries hesitate to attack Chou, or even offend it, and as such his presence was rightly exalted within the country.

Sages could move countries with words alone, a gesture could calm the seas, and a single judgment could doom a person to either the highest of heavens, or to the twelfth circle of hells. In fact, if talking about Nekomata, someone had recorded Nekomata single-handed quelling a huge earthquake within Chou from one of the Demon King's tantrums ten years ago, leaving Chou unscathed in the midst of an age of turmoil and destruction.

So yeah, the half-baked info from his clan was right – if anyone ever succeeded in killing Nekomata, Chou would be dealt a nearly irreparable blow. Emphasis on the if though. As if any assassin could stand against him. He'd probably twitch an eyebrow, and the assassin would be dead and buried under the ground.

All this information ran through Sugawara's mind as he picked his way across the border, sticking to the dodgier mountain roads, mind-map in his eye. In the nervous running commentary in his mind, Sugawara went through all the scenarios of his death if his appeal didn't succeed, or if Michimiya had been too optimistic about Nekomata's kindness.

Maybe it was because of this nervousness, but in the end it took him a week to find Nekomata after entering Chou. Not in any fancy, bourgeois hotels along the roads as befitting his status or anything though.

No, Sugawara found Nekomata meditating in the middle of a forest clearing comfortably far from civilisation, rich clothes dirtied from sitting on the ground. He looked like a wrinkled old man, unremarkable to the eye if not for some grass and plants in his hair. Skin darkened from a tan and smile lines deepset, there was something homey about him. Comforting. It took Sugawara by surprise, because besides his master, he'd never felt any sort of liking for anybody. But even so, when Sugawara gathered his _qi_ into his eyes, the power Nekomata held inside his frame blazed so brightly he had to immediately let his _qi_ go. If their leader was considered powerful with two torch's worth of power, Nekomata was like looking at the sun during the hottest summer afternoon.

The books weren't joking. Sages were _monsters_. If Nekomata turned hostile, he'd never escape.

Sugawara paused, fingers tightening on the tree-branch as he made to drop, stopping him in the last second. His mind whirred. Can this person really free him? Despite his power and the weird comforting feeling (Sugawara suspected mind-influencing _qi_ arts), Nekomata didn't look especially charitable or kind. His face was a little too angular and gaunt for that. On second look, the smile lines on his face looked more like smirk lines than smile lines.

But Michimiya had never been wrong, and he… he trusted her. Trusts her. She went out on a limb for him, gave him this chance that she could've used for herself. At that, he stopped short, and forced his thoughts to stop _thinking_ , and imagined her face when she handed the mission to him – honest, straight-forward. Hopeful, for him.

 _(Why, Michimiya?)_

He dropped down from his tree on faith alone. Perfectly silent, he approached. Not even a blade of grass bent underneath his approach.

"Hmm," Nekomata hummed, eyes still closed. "Assassin? That foot technique gives you away, you know."

Sugawara froze at the edge of the clearing.

"Strange though," Nekomata mused, slowly opening a pair of surprisingly shrewd, beady eyes. "I don't sense any bloodlust from you."

Looking into Nekomata's eyes was like looking into the universe in the deepest part of night, overwhelming and unknowable. Sugawara grit his teeth though, and stepped forward into the afternoon light against all of his training. He twisted his wrists – his poisoned blades were still in his sleeve. If his appeal failed, he could still attack as a distraction for his escape.

"Great Sage!" He didn't wait, dropping onto both knees and laying his forehead on the back of his fingers. "Allow me to make a request!" At the silence that followed, Sugawara ploughed on. "Please change my divine name!"

Granted that Sugawara had directed most of his _qi_ to his ears to perceive any sounds since his posture was so compromised, the undetected hand that gently pulled his shoulders up nearly made him stab the man from reflex. Whoops. He gently slid his blades back into his sleeves.

"You… where do you come from?" Nekomata asked, squinting at his face.

Sugawara opened his mouth to reply, but the restrictions choked him before he could give any details at all. Nekomata narrowed his eyes as Sugawara gasped for air, choking on the spells that constricted his throat.

"What's your name?" Nekomata tried again.

Again, Sugawara forced his jaws to open without making a noise.

"Whoever they are, they're controlling you by your divine title?" Nekomata asked, voice deep and patient. "Well, easily fixed." With that, Nekomata focused on something above Sugawara's head that he couldn't see and reached out with a glowing green hand. With a few casual scribbles, the green faded into the air and the words bubbled out of his throat.

"…name is Sugawara, I come from Wu, the nineteenth faction of military dealing with internal politics..." Sugawara stopped in surprise, touching his throat with a puzzled frown. He'd expected more... _flash._ "You did it already?"

"I got rid of all the pesky tracking and suicide curses too, if you want to know," Nekomata replied, sinking back into sitting cross-legged in front of him, squinting eyes still fixed on his face as if he was searching for something. "That you come from Wu isn't that surprising. Only fifteen divisions of military my _ass."_

Nekomata's withered face looked annoyed after his comment, and Sugawara didn't quite know what to _say_. His life was saved just like… that. A literal swipe of a finger.

Weren't sages a little… _too_ powerful?

"Thank you," he started, hesitantly, already wondering what to do in the future. What was he supposed to do now?

"Do you have a personal name, Sugawara?" Nekomata asked randomly, beady eyes intent.

"Not one I know of," Sugawara replied.

"Do you have anywhere to go?" was the next question.

Where was this leading?

"No, I have made no plans," Sugawara replied.

Nekomata narrowed his eyes, before tutting his tongue. "Well, I'll go on to Wu and I can pretend that I killed an assassin that came for my life. That was your plan, right?" Nekomata chuckled at Sugawara's surprise (and slight panic) for being so easily read. "It's alright, I'm a good actor. While I do that, go to Chou's capital city with this pass."

Sugawara accepted the pass with both hands, curious. "What do want in exchange for your generosity?" Sugawara asked, subtly tracing _qi_ over the piece of paper that he'd been given for traps, trackers… Nothing.

"I'm going to take you in as my apprentice. You're a smart kid, and I'm getting old anyway. Taking in one of little Ukai's kids is just a bonus, really."

Who was Ukai? Also, " _Apprentice?_ " Sugawara gaped. "But I am an assassin, sent to kill you. From _Wu_. Even I know no one likes Wu, and I'm from Wu!"

"Once you're my apprentice, you'll be officially recognised as a Chou citizen," Nekomata answered simply, scratching his neck with a yawn. "You'll need a name though. What about Koushi? Sugawara Koushi seems like it'll suit you."

Nekomata placidly blinked then, stilling to wait for his answer while Sugawara grappled with the understanding that he'd been offered an official identity, a name, a citizenship and a place to live all at once. What was the catch? Where was it?

"Aren't you afraid that someone will track me down?" Sugawara asked to stall his answer, still trying to find the catch. There must be a catch _somewhere._

"Does anyone know your name?" Nekomata asked back. Michimiya's smiling face filled his mind, but she would never tell. The leader well... (he was stupid). "And will anyone from your old division go to Chou and recognise you?"

"No-one that can't be trusted knows my name," Sugawara replied, "and our nineteenth faction mostly deals with the internal affairs."

Sugawara stopped short. Huh. His eyes drew back down to look at the black turtle crest of Chou on the paper pass. There... wasn't much reason _not_ to accept.

"That answers it. It's not as if I can't deal with anyone they send after you anyway, so. Are you going to accept?" Nekomata asked again, pointing at the pass in Sugawara's hand. "I mean, you can keep it to enter the city, but it'll be hard for a kid like you to fit in if you do. I can protect you while teaching you cool stuff."

Opportunities were just dropping into his lap, but Sugawara had always learnt not to look at the gift-horse in the mouth (or you'll get burned). He had nothing to lose. If this was a trap, then it wouldn't be any worse than where he came from anyway.

"I accept."

Nekomata smiled. "Good, good. Now, my first request for you, my new apprentice, is to cut all that hair off." Sugawara blinked, before pointing at the grey hair that had been neatly tied back into a ponytail as per Wu standards. It reached his elbows at his longest. "Yeah, that hair. I'm not used to your face with long hair, it's weird. Cut it short and fluffy."

Uh…

Sugawara shuffled off to cut his hair, and when he came back Nekomata nodded approvingly, the plants in his hair bobbing with the movement. With a closer look, Sugawara was surprised to notice that it wasn't that the plants were in his hair because the wind had blown them there or anything, but because the plants were _growing out of his scalp_. Woah.

"Undeniable now, yeah," Nekomata said as he put his hand on his chin. "Very Sugawara," he continued with atrocious grammar. "Koushi, how old are you?"

"Eight, nearly nine," Sugawara replied with his eyes still trained on Nekomata's hair, fascinated.

"Ugh, Wu. Child soldiers are bad enough, but child _assassins_? Well, don't worry, Koushi," Nekomata patted Sugawara's shoulder. "I'm going to let you act your age when we get back to Chou!" Then the old man started a wheezy loud laugh, and Sugawara stoically bore the sudden laughing fit with his rapidly acquired skill to put up with the absurd. If the old man wanted to play saviour, who was he to complain?

* * *

Sugawara made the trip to Chou alone, still vaguely paranoid about pursuers even after spending a week around Nekomata who kept eyeing his twitchy behaviour with increasing annoyance until he ultimately gave Sugawara a protective pendant that would 'removes tracking stuff and never let anyone put any spell you don't want on you ever again now calm down you're giving me the heeby jeebies dagnabbit.'

After presenting the pass Nekomata gave him at the gates of Chou's capital along with a letter, the guards took one look at it and grinned.

"Old man Nekomata finally accepted an apprentice guys!" One of the guards yelled backwards, and suddenly all the windows around the gate was filled with curious eyes and faces, staring at him, yelling curious questions, whispering among themselves. The guard he was talking to also grinned back at him, handing him back the pass and the letter. "Where did Nekomata dig you up from? With that getup, you must be a ninja of sorts, right?"

Ninja – on missions, Sugawara had stolen a few hours here and there before going back to their hideout to struggle through children's books in a few bookstores in Wu. Ninja threw kunai, wore black, and in the books, killed for justice.

"Yeah. Kind of," Sugawara replied. "Are you going to question my origins now?"

He mentally pulled up the fabricated backstory he'd created while coming here in preparation, but was surprised out of it when a friendly hand patted his head. The guard gave him a blinding grin.

"Kid, stop talking like an old man! Anyway, if old man Nekomata accepted you, we trust him enough not to ask questions. I mean, he even says in his letter not to ask questions and that he just ' _liked you_ ' so," the guard shrugged. "He does that a lot. I mean, he did that to me and helped me get my job too, you know? He's a nice guy. Anyway, I'm being rude! What's your name?"

"Sugawara… Koushi," Sugawara carefully replied, and the guard grinned enthusiastically.

"I'm Inuoka Sou! Nice to meet you!" Taking off his helmet, Inuoka shook free his spiky brown hair with relief, before gesturing at him in a friendly enough fashion, Sugawara supposed, smile blinding.

"Yeah. Me too."

Inuoka's smile did not dim at all from Sugawara's less than enthused greeting, and simply just wheeled around and yelled, "I'm ditching you guys to lead this guy to the palace okay?" up to the gate's other guards. They all booed him when they passed, jokingly telling him he was abusing his 'captain privileges'.

Conversely, they gave Sugawara smiles and waves and wishes for him to 'check by' later, and their curious eyes followed them until they turned the corner.

Sugawara was overwhelmed.

"They're a handful," Inuoka said pretty cheerily as he led Sugawara through a loud, bustling bazaar with merchants yelling about their _limited, be careful not to miss sales!_ "But Nekomata likes personally checking how everyone's doing around the city so you'll meet them all soon enough!"

"They seemed nice," Sugawara replied when Inuoka paused, expectant. The guard beamed at his comment, before laughing.

"Yeah, we're all friends!" Inuoka then continued to chatter about the other guards as he skilfully led Sugawara through the streets, sticking to less crowded areas when he noticed that Sugawara was uncomfortable with the crush of people.

With the exception of Nekomata and maybe his training instructors, he'd never been talked at so much before. Not even by Michimiya.

"Here's the palace! Wait a sec, gimme back the pass and letter for a bit? I need to show this to the palace guards. Don't worry, I'm pals with them so it'll be quick." Inuoka jogged forward, pass and letter in hand and greeted the guards standing outside the palace gate warmly, gesturing excitedly at Sugawara while the other guards read the letter. Sugawara approached when they all smiled at him, gripping his pendant.

"Hello, it's nice to meet you. My name is Sugawara Koushi. Please take care of me," Sugawara greeted formally with a small bow that was similar enough to Wu custom thankfully. But all Inuoka did was laugh, as Sugawara was quickly learning that he seemed to do that _all the time_.

"See?" _Laugh._ "The kid talks like an old guy!" _Laugh. "_ Anyway, take care of him for me. Maybe lead him to the old man's cottage so that he can set things up and wait for Nekomata to come back?" _Laugh_.

Why did he laugh so much?

"Sure thing, Inuoka," the palace guard replied with an easy shrug, before eyeing Sugawara and tilting his head. "Come on, short stuff. Let's get going."

* * *

Wu and Chou couldn't have been more different. Sugawara had reported to Wu's capital more than a few times, but there the atmosphere had been more formal, more distant as people hurried from place to place to do their daily things. Even though Chou was just as large and busy, the people were just so insistently… _nosy_.

Sugawara was undecided if he liked this or not. He did, however, decidedly like his new living quarters.

Back in Wu, all the apprentices lived in metal bunks, ten people per room until they _levelled up_ , so to speak. Nekomata's cottage however, was a surprisingly small and humble affair right next to the entrance to the biggest of the palace's royal gardens, as well as the servant's entrance to the kitchens. The maids, in the time it took for him to walk from the gate to the cottage when he'd first arrived, had already miraculously set up a small room inside the cottage, with a small bed and extra clothes for him to wear in an acceptable size. The room, although small, was neatly furnished with everything he'd ever need. The mattress, he found when he bounced on it, was also surprisingly soft compared to his lifetime of one centimeter thick cotton mats.

(For some reason everything was patterned in green plaid. Why plaid? Even the window sill was painted in that pattern. Nekomata must _really_ love that pattern).

After changing into a green plaid shirt and loose grey pants, Sugawara had planned to scout the premises for escape routes before he'd been caught by a loitering Inuoka and dragged back to the outer guard houses to… uncomfortably sit while everyone tried to get him to open up. Inuoka was surprisingly sly - knowing Sugawara was trying his best to be polite, he'd twist Sugawara into staying longer by playing the 'haha, its custom to finish drinks before leaving in Chou, Sugawara!' _cue_ _l_ _aughter here_ and similar cards.

Sugawara was so _onto_ that manipulation that he vowed to memorise all the weird rules Inuoka plied him with and parrot them back to him one day.

This happened every day – one day he saw a few of the maids and gardeners peeking at him with curiosity and giggling. The next, one of the palace servants politely chided him for trying to do his own laundry. He became a steady fixture at the palace kitchens, where one of the small tables there had a small blanket for Sugawara because he kept falling asleep to the warm smell of baking bread and roast.

The guards were always especially friendly, always willing to drag an _unwilling_ Sugawara to various activities throughout the day (they never took him to training again though, because he'd humiliatingly trounced them all that one time).

He got used to the older aunties tutting over him surprisingly quickly. Every morning, he woke up to a large plate of breakfast on Nekomata's dining table. At lunch, a good-willed servant would somehow reliably find wherever he'd wandered to and give him lunch in a basket. Dinner varied – sometimes with people, sometimes in the kitchen, and sometimes by himself as he processed another new fact of life he'd never known.

Nekomata came back from Wu a month later, and smiled in satisfaction when he saw that Sugawara had made himself at home with only one or two grumbles about 'cohabitation mess ugh'.

"How do you like Chou?" Nekomata asked that night, as Sugawara stumbled his way through reporting his experiences in a way that didn't sound like a military report, as per Nekomata's request. Sugawara stopped his faltering description of Inuoka's mother (who kept handing him too many jam-breads but had a smile that reminded him of Michimiya, hard and caring and protective).

"Different," Sugawara admitted to the crackling fireplace. "But I like it. I think."

"That's good," Nekomata said as he drifted off, plant-hair drooping with his eyes as he nodded off. Sugawara watched, before going to fetch a blanket and tucking it around him.

* * *

His apprenticeship with Nekomata didn't change much of his daily routine. Sugawara, having rested for a whole month, felt extremely rusty when he trained his skills again, and it took more than a few months to get back into shape. During that time, Nekomata would either check on random things around the city just like Inuoka said, or watch him train as he did his own sagey meditations and experiments, most of which he seemed to do in the royal gardens with no seeming conscience as he blew up some bush or other. Sugawara watched with growing amusement through the months as he realised that yes, Nekomata did smirk more than smile, and he did have a surprisingly an intimidating competitive analytical streak, but he was also genuinely _kind_.

He also liked to butt into Sugawara's business as much as possible. Nekomata couldn't say much about his assassin's techniques, but when he saw his _qi_ arts and poison skills, he was full of complaints and judgey raised eyebrows.

"Your magic is so primitive!" Nekomata complained from his rocking chair, where he'd gone to rest after gardening. He aggressively rocked as he stewed in obvious annoyance at Sugawara's feats of assassin-ry. "Who even needs to mutter _othis_ to activate anything related to enhancement anyway? Babies, that's who!"

"Magic?" Sugawara echoed, having bounded over to Nekomata's side within half a breath. "You mean _qi?"_

"Qi, magic, chi, mana, whatever, it's all the same," Nekomata waved off. "Now, tell my why you mumble _othis_ every time you need to do magic."

"It's how I was taught," Sugawara answered. "It's how our… magic was found in the first place."

Nekomata made a disgusted face. "You mean, that rubbish _spitha othis_ crystal test that no-one uses anymore?"

Sugawara didn't want to think back on it, but like, "Yeah."

Nekomata sighed. "We have a long way to go then," Nekomata grumbled, before slowly getting up, waving one irritated hand for Sugawara to follow. "Okay, Koushi. Listen up. There are two main types of magic – _spitha_ , which affects and enhances the world around you and _othis,_ which enhances your own body to go beyond its limits…"

Nekomata was surprisingly knowledgeable.

A week later, with Nekomata's words in mind, Sugawara focused.

" _Spitha is the type of magic that requires all the chanting and learning new words_ ," Nekomata lectured, _"But othis, when learned, you should be able to theoretically activate and focus without chants at all. It's your own magic, used in your own body. There's no leakage, no waste. The limits are your own."_

Just like Nekomata said, without the chant in front, _othis_ was harder to control because it felt more slippery without an active word to control it, but it was also more… limitless in its potential. It was just the manipulation of _qi_ within his body - usually _qi_ was intertwined with the life-force of blood, and to pull it away and use was the sacrifice that was needed to affect the world. Nekomata however just waved that away as _spitha_ magic, which Sugawara had no talent for anyway. Bodily _othis_ magic however, required no sacrifice - it was just manipulation, Sugawara realised.

He learnt to push the _qi_ around his body in a week, as he separated _qi_ from the flow of his blood and soul. Welling it around his ears and his brain led him to have better hearing, stretching it along the stretch of his core and legs let him jump, and pooling it on his skin made it more waterproof and somewhat resistant to blunt physical attacks. And activating it without _othis_ was... freeing.

When he showed it off to Nekomata later, Nekomata hummed in surprise. "Good job," Nekomata praised after Sugawara flickered from the end of the palace gardens to land without a whisper of gravity in front of Nekomata's chair. "But damn you caught on quickly. Inuoka took half a year to learn that. Are you sure you don't remember a place called Japan?" He prodded.

"I already said no," Sugawara replied, exasperated, gradually letting go of his inner _qi_ to roll his shoulders. "I've checked maps before, and a place like that doesn't exist. Are you going to show me how to mix that miracle antidote you told me about before or not? I'll go back to training if you don't."

"Ugh, kids," Nekomata complained, even as he stood up with Sugawara's steady arm to help. "Already lipping back. Well, genius, let's see you try learning one of my most famous neutralisers! It'll bring the one you know to shame!"

It did bring the one Sugawara know to shame, but he also did learn it on the first try. Nekomata was miffed throughout the rest of the day, only ending his childish silent treatment when Sugawara came back from the kitchens with a few choice bottles of sake.

* * *

Four years passed this way without incident – Sugawara learnt all the guard's names, friendliest to Inuoka's unit, of which Nekomata seemed absurdly pleased to hear. He kept his assassin's skills sharp even when there wasn't much of a point, and the first time he laughed was cooed over, in his opinion, much too obsessively by everyone around him.

The first time he met King Naoi was when the King himself visited Nekomata's cottage while he and Nekomata had been enjoying a quiet dinner. The King's strong jaw and lively face had been overshadowed by his dismay when all Nekomata reacted to his presence was to grunt, 'yeah, that's Naoi. I mentored him for a while so he keeps coming back for advice like a dependent puppy,' of which Sugawara nodded seriously.

"Nekomata!" The king complained, "That's too savage even for you! Right when I dug out time out of my busy schedule to visit your official apprentice that _you didn't introduce me to_."

"What's the point?" Nekomata grinned, having got up to get a few bottles of sake he always kept stocked within a cupboard. "Oh yeah, Koushi, that's the King by the way."

Sugawara blinked at the new information, looked at how Nekomata was acting before he ducked a quick bow and continued to eat dinner like nothing had happened.

Naoi was suitably exasperated. "Like apprentice, like master," the king had groaned humorously, before engaging in a drinking match with Nekomata (of which Nekomata lost miserably). Sugawara had to help Naoi sneak back into his rooms because ' _people can't catch me drunk, help me!'_

But by then, Sugawara had expected such things from Chou already. So all he did was laugh and maybe used some secret assassin skills to deliver the King back to his room. It wasn't the worst application of his skills really. It was ultimately funny to see Naoi collapse in the room with relief only to be greeted with his unimpressed personal butler.

It was the summer of his twelfth year when something _new_ happened, when he met someone that once again, changed his life.

* * *

"Koushi," Nekomata's voice called from downstairs, and Sugawara quickly stopped his evening katas on the roof and slung himself through the kitchen window. Nekomata had long given up trying to make him go through doors like everyone else and usually left a window or two open.

Besides, Nekomata was getting on in the years, and sometimes (to his utterly grumpy consternation), he had to get help in reaching for the higher shelves and windows was just Sugawara's fastest way of travel. So he went feet first through the window and landed with a lazy stretch, before walking to creaking overloaded bookshelf underneath the stairs.

"Do you need the book on the effects of different pollens on bees, or that one about the benefits of nature magic on plant cells?" Sugawara asked, already eyeing the two books that Nekomata had wanted to pull out the most the past month for his nightly reading.

"No, it's not about books," Nekomata grimaced at the reminder of his age, before waving a hand at the table where dinner had already been laid out. "By the way, dinner. It'll be good to… eat first. Probably."

Sugawara sat down and finished dinner warily. In all the years he'd been here, Nekomata had never been so out of ease. The old man always liked to 'go with the flow' in his somewhat playful, light-hearted fashion. It probably helped that he was one of the most powerful creatures in existence, but still.

Nekomata coughed. "Well, I first wanted to call you down because I thought that this news would be interesting to you – the Lord Azumane is sending his son and his personal guard to study and live at the palace for _reasons_ , and as they're the same age as you I thought it was a good time for you to have friends your own age. Inuoka doesn't count," Nekomata cut off Sugawara's protest that he had _friends_. "He's seven years older than you, and already past all the bonding experiences that you can only have with people you go through teenage angst with."

"Okay, so?" Sugawara asked after he digested the information. "Where are these new friends?"

"That's the thing," Nekomata's face settled into a scowl (and Sugawara worried a little, because weren't his cheeks growing a little too hollow?). "They were supposed to arrive this morning. Communications have been cut off from where they were staying last night too, so I'm getting a little concerned. I was just going to ask you to race down Nishi road and check if they got into trouble or something?"

Sugawara looked at Nekomata, before tilting his head. "You don't think it's that simple."

"Nope. I don't want to wake bad memories in you or anything, but would you…"

Sugawara smiled. "No worries, I got it. Your apprentice is pretty capable now, you know?" His grin made Nekomata relax a little, and Sugawara counted that as a win before heading upstairs.

Pulling on some loose black pants and shirts, he wrapped them tight to his legs and arms like old days. His pouch and holster were filled with poisoned weapons once again, and his trusty tantō now hung from his belt. Forgoing any sort of hood or mask, Sugawara activated his _qi_ and leapt out the window from old habit, speeding towards the west road.

* * *

Sugawara was glad that it was hard to slip back into his assassin mindset, and when it did the fit was like an old, stretched glove, thin and easy to break. Good.

Completely silent in his passing except the occasional rustle of leaves, he headed along Nishi road with a keen eye, but even his eyes boosted with _qi_ didn't see any overturned carriages or bandit attacks.

When Sugawara reached the end of Nishi road, he tapped chin in thought. _Lord_ Azumane, Nekomata had said, and any lord's son wouldn't live in any drab inns or anything. Since there weren't any high class places anywhere near Nishi, the Azumane's son must have stayed at a neighbouring lord's castle as a guest. The castle for the _Nishi_ fief was… Sugawara looked at the moon and calculated, before he started sprinting back the way he came.

Sugawara smelt the fire before he saw the red glow beyond the farmland, bright against darkness. The fire must've been recent, since Sugawara hadn't noticed it when he passed it before. He quickened his pace, and flashed through the village to land in front of the burning castle, where harried servants were already trying their best to put out the bits of fire they could see.

Quickly, he pulled at one of the panicking servants outside who was watching the fire.

"What happened?" He asked a crying maid, flashing Nekomata's crest.

"The sage…" she breathed, before sniffing and trying to compose herself. "Reinforcements from the capital?" When Sugawara nodded, the maid coughed but didn't question his age, thank goodness. "Our Lord welcomed Azumane-sama and his retinue yesterday, but because of a bandit attack Azumane-sama was injured and was welcome to stay one more day. We were planning to send a missive this morning to the capital, but the bandits that attacked Azumane-sama proved not to be so simple and demanded his removal from our Lord's grounds. Our Lord refused, of course, but they had prepared a ward beforehand, and no-one can leave the village grounds."

The fire was probably the attackers growing impatient with their siege and attacking. Sugawara was slightly late.

"What does Azumane look like?"

"A tall, rough-looking boy," the maid answered quickly. "But he's very gentle, very kind. He wears loose, red robes, with his family crest on them. Brown eyed…"

"That's enough, thank you" Sugawara smiled at the maid, before drawing his mask over his mouth and nose. Quickly dipping himself into a decorative fountain, he plunged inside the castle.

* * *

The attackers had clearly spread oil as they invaded, as the heavy sharp stink tinged the smoke that lit up the flames that trailed up in one slick black line up the corridors. His leather _zori_ didn't stand much of a chance a few minutes inside as they spontaneously combusted from the trapped heat, but his skin was only barely licked when Sugawara raced forward, barely feeling the flames.

To find the little Azumane lord, all Sugawara had to do was follow his ears. Underneath the crackle of flames, beyond the struggles of still trapped servants, there was the clash of guards and bandits, and the vague ripples of magic that indicated the more adept, personal guards. Up two floors, on the right.

Sugawara changed his course and went through his favourite way of travel – out the window and up the walls outside. He swung straight through the window up into the corridor of the conflict, and immediately saw an ornate door at the end that two uniformed guards were protecting, while a highly armed group was throwing fire at the guards.

Aah, two fire _qi_ users. No wonder they were so careless with their use of fire.

He reached the back of the attacking group in an instant, and a few quick punches and a kick later, four out of seven were down. Although Sugawara had targeted the _qi_ users first, one of them had noticed him and escaped behind a red barrier.

Well, no worries.

Sugawara breathed deep and concentrated his own _qi_ into his fist, knocking away one of the attackers left with his right elbow while he let his fist fly after a full-body rotation. In the moment before his fist touched the barrier, his own fist glowed a dull red.

' _Internal qi, integrated into bone, is always solid. External qi depends on the will-power of those who wield it_.' That was one of the first lessons that he'd been taught by Michimiya, back when he was still learning the perfect fist, her fingers gently guiding his own for the most efficient way to force a punch.

A fire _qi_ user who couldn't even generate his own flame couldn't possibly match up to him.

The barrier shattered, and the fire _qi_ user with it, flying into the wall with the strength of his fist. The remaining two that he'd neglected had been taken down by the castle guards in the meantime, and they stood in rest in front of him now, sweating and wary, but on less of a guard. After a deep breath through his mask, Sugawara retracted his _qi_ back into his core and smiled, taking a leaf out of Inuoka's book and laughing.

"It wasn't very nice of them to gang up on you guys like that," Sugawara said cheerily, as he pulled out Nekomata's crest. "I'm the Sage's apprentice, Sugawara Koushi. The Sage got worried when Azumane's retinue didn't arrive?"

The castle guards visibly slumped when they saw Nekomata's crest.

"Thank you for saving us," one of the men bowed to him while the other started leading them down the corridor. "The door is barricaded from the inside, so we have to take a secret passage into the Lady's room…"

"Is it just that room?" Sugawara asked, pointing backwards towards the fancy barricaded door. "Does it have a window?"

"The room has a small balcony on the other side of the building…"

"Okay," Sugawara shrugged, before slinging one of the guards beneath his arm and told the other to 'wait there please'. He slammed one of the corridor windows open and jumped outside, his fingers finding a ledge to swing them around the corner and onto aforementioned small balcony. He gently set the guard down amidst the surprised cries from within the room before quickly going back and doing the same to the second guard.

As he left the second guard to recover, the first guard had already quickly reached an old, finely dressed man and was reporting the incident. "…and then the Sage's apprentice appeared as reinforcements and delivered us here," the guard concluded, and the old man nodded, stroking his beard as he stood tall and dignified. "We owe you our thanks," the Lord smiled at Sugawara, who smiled.

"I'm only glad I reached you on time! Nekomata got worried when Azumane didn't arrive," Sugawara waved off the thanks. "Speaking of which, do you want me to transfer you outside to safety before continuing this conversation?" Sugawara nodded to all the occupants in the room, the Lord, Lady, one rough-looking well-dressed boy (as the maid described), and a few personal servants before gesturing at the burning building at large. Because well, burning building. Why were they talking here?

"Please," the Lord answered for them all, and Sugawara took that as permission to ask the Lord to cling onto his back. "It might be a little undignified," Sugawara apologised, but the Lord just shook his head and somehow made being piggy-backed by a twelve year old somewhat stately and graceful. His powers of accepting the absurd was even higher than _Sugawara's,_ he'd reckon. That was kind of impressive, really. "Please, proceed," the Lord continued, and Sugawara did, jumping out the window down to a tree he'd eyed with good strong branches. The branch creaked, the Lord may have given a small, dignified girlish scream (how? Sugawara wondered), but a few more hops later, Sugawara unloaded the Lord from his back to a group of servants and village soldiers.

"My Lord!" They all greeted, and it didn't take the Lord two seconds before he was already composed and taking charge of the chaos. Impressive. Sugawara nodded in approval and jumped back up.

Making the trip eight times was a little bit of a chore, but when it came to gathering the last one, the Azumane's son, the boy refused to climb on his back.

Sugawara stared at the _reason why he was here_ stutter through a thoroughly weak excuse as to not escape a burning building.

"I c-can't," the boy stuttered, clenching his sleeves. "Daichi's still there, he was leading a diversion!"

For a boy looking like he was on the verge of hyperventilation, Sugawara thought that Azumane was surprisingly articulate. Maybe he was a little addled from smoke inhalation?

"He said he'll come back to this room, and someone has to let him in!" Azumane continued blathering, and Sugawara felt sympathy, honestly, but the room was going to combust soon from heat alone and he was running out of patience.

"Who is Daichi?" He asked conversationally, debating whether he should just haul the boy up and go. Ah, but Nekomata said that he wanted them to become _friends_. First impressions, got to think about first impressions...

"My best friend," the gangly boy replied as he wrung his hands. "He's my personal guard, but he just started the job because he only became our official vassal two weeks ago. Oh, I shouldn't have made my father let him come with me…"

"Okay, Azumane," Sugawara said with patience. "Let me get you out of here, and I will save this Daichi after this."

"B-but you're the same age as me!"

"I've been ferrying all the people out of this third storey room through jumping alone," Sugawara dead-panned. "Believe me when I say I can do more than that. Also, please answer quickly, the building just might be on _fire?_ "

Azumane blinked, before looking around the smoking room as if he'd honestly not noticed that the room was empty, before light lit in his eyes. "Oh, yes, yes! Please save Daichi! He should be on the other side of the castle, near the kitchens!"

 _Finally_. It took less than half a minute to settle Azumane to safety, before with a put-upon sigh, he raced around the side of the mansion, frustrated when the stone walls blocked the more delicate sounds. He did know the general layout of castles however, and veered towards where kitchens generally were.

He noticed a few dead guards and randomly dressed attackers near the back of the castle. He let the guards to it, since they seemed to be winning. Further in, within a random corridor sounded a clang of metal and a few yells of pain accompanied by victorious evil laughs that didn't sound particularly good, so Sugawara veered in and attacked the first unhelmeted head he saw. In a flash of limbs and the sing of _qi_ in his veins, Sugawara made short work of the other opponents before kneeling down in front of an exhausted guard.

"Do you know a Daichi, Azumane's guard?"

The guard coughed from the smoke, but pointed further into the castle. "Sawamura led most of the group into believing he was fleeing towards Azumane's location. Past the kitchen, I don't know where he went. Thanks for the save."

Patting the guard on the back and hauling him outside into clearer air, Sugawara nodded and continued racing down the corridor until he saw a flicker of blue light, clearly magic. It was bright enough that it silhouetted the group of fifteen that was attacking it. Well, well, his brain mused in interest. No wonder such a young boy (he'd gotten the impression from Azumane that Sawamura Daichi must not be an old, grizzled man) was chosen to be the personal guard of a Lord's son. Such an advanced _spitha_ user huh...

When he drew near, he realised that the blue light was a repulsion ward etched onto a large shield, planted in front of a small door. A glance told him it was impressive work for an emergency.

Behind the shield was a tuft of black hair, where a person was clearly holding the shield steady.

Most likely Sawamura Daichi, Sugawara concluded even he dove in to double-neck chop down two people, quickly followed by a leg sweep and solar plexus stomp to immobilise another two. Punching an armored man's armpit before quickly snapping a kick between the legs, Sugawara barely dodged a launched fireball from a shout of ' _Look out!'_ from behind the shield. A fire _qi_ user had backed up out of his reach, and was already generating another fireball from the surrounding smoke and flame.

Sugawara narrowed his eyes.

Ah, how unsightly. Maybe fifteen to one was a bit too much for hand-to-hand combat. Back to his forte then, fingers dipping into his weapon's pouch.

A few well thrown kunai and poisoned needles later, Sugawara picked himself up and kicked a few groaning enemies in the back of the head to make sure they were knocked out before walking towards the shield that a boy his age had hunched protectively over a small door. The blue bubble of a repulsion ward flickered and disintegrated into the air as he approached, letting Sugawara near to crouch near the black tuft of hair peeking over the shield.

"Hello, are you Sawamura Daichi?" He asked conversationally, friendly smile on his face. "I'm here on the tearful demand of Azumane, who was very worried about you!"

A weak cough greeted his answer, as the shield was pushed away, revealing a pleasant enough face.

"Hi. The way you took out those people was…" Daichi coughed. "Was really cool. You said Asahi was worried for me?"

Sugawara nodded. "Practically crying," he shared. "Now, lemme get you out of here." Sugawara tugged at a limp arm, and frowned when the other boy didn't lift. Daichi just… flopped sideways. "Hey. Get up." When Sugawara heaved, Daichi's body surprisingly didn't move at all.

That… wasn't right. Sugawara was quite confident on his _othis_ – strength shouldn't be an issue. He'd once lifted an obnoxious golden statue that King Naoi hadn't liked that was three times his size without sweat. Daichi was _way_ less than that.

"I tricked them into thinking this door was the secret passage to the Lord's room," Daichi said in answer to his confusion. "Then I sank myself into the rock, so I didn't need as much strength to steady my shield and wards. But," Daichi grinned, "I don't think I have enough magic to get myself out again."

Indeed, now that he noticed, Daichi was in a sitting position, legs sank into the stone floor of the castle. Sugawara could only see the top slant of his thighs before his legs disappeared into stone. Impressive use of magic again. Daichi was just as impressive as he'd thought he was, if he could draw wards _and_ manipulate stone. Maybe Nekomata's friend recommendations weren't that strange after all?

But the next thing that came out of Daichi's mouth made Sugawara's opinion of him plummet.

"It was an honour anyway, to die protecting Asahi, I guess," Daichi murmured, smoke clearly getting to him now that there was no need to fight to stay awake. "Kinda dumb though. This is just my first mission. Asahi the type who needs someone to kick him into gear, totally useless…"

Sugawara stared at down this face (what was he looking so peaceful for?), before feeling irritated. Really irritated. He slapped Daichi on the face, hard enough for a sting _and_ a bruise (hah!), enough for Daichi to startle awake.

"Huh?" Daichi said, comically confused as he jerked back into dazed consciousness.

Sugawara's eyes were intentionally blank as he leaned down closer to this Sawamura Daichi, who seemed to be under some brainwashed delusion that Sugawara had to clear right _now_.

"I've seen enough death," Sugawara replied quietly. "The only honour in death will be your own. Everyone else you know will _grieve_ , and the satisfaction in dying for your honour is a lie to make you feel better as you die. There isn't even glory here, since you're so young. You're my age, aren't you? Twelve? No-one important will remember you."

"Wha-what? No, I'm thirteen! Wait no, that's not the point!" Daichi spluttered. "What type of words is that to someone near death?"

"You're not near death," Sugawara dismissed, eyes still boring into the wide stare that Daichi had on his face. "You're suffering from smoke inhalation. Your _qi_ is low, but there's still enough that you can get yourself out of the rock. The smoke inhalation I can fix slightly." Sugawara unhooked his mask then, grimacing with the full force of the smoke hit his nose, before covering Daichi's face with it. "This mask is one I use when mixing poison – it filters anything near perfectly. There, you can breathe."

"You…" Daichi tried to reply after gulping down large coughs of filtered air, eyes round on Sugawara's face.

"Now you have a choice," Sugawara replied simply, his own _qi_ rapidly expending as he tried to keep the smoke damaging his body. He might have to grudgingly give a few redeeming kudos to this Daichi if he withstood this smoke for so long. "You either guarantee a miserable death here, or you gamble and use all your remaining _qi_ to get your legs out of the stone. Trust me when I say if you do so, I'll get you to the healers quick enough to fix the _qi_ deprivation."

Silence. Daichi's eyes searched Sugawara's face.

Sugawara leaned back to give Daichi some space, but also give himself a chance to center himself because he was nearing his limits with stupid, stubborn people for the day. Scratch Daichi being maybe being a good friend. Nekomata expected him to be _friends_ with these two?

"Choose," Sugawara snapped, finally. Did he think they were made of time when the castle was _burning down around them?_ "Or are you one to simply accept death when something gets slightly hard?"

Daichi's next reaction baffled him. He laughed, and not even hysterically either. When he stopped, from the wrinkles around his eyes, Daichi was smiling. Then a determined glint entered his eyes.

"No, I'm not," Daichi replied with a smile in his voice, before rapidly paling when he muttered a word _'diafygi'_ and blue _qi_ started spiralling out of Daichi into the stone trapping his legs. Sugawara immediately hooked his hands underneath Daichi's arms and _pulled_.

Daichi slid out of the stone with an uncomfortable grimace, but his face was much too pale afterwards as the _qi_ escaped his hold, spiralling from the rock into the air. He was the type to look better with a healthy tan, Sugawara concluded as he immediately hefted him on his shoulder, and raced down the corridor, through the door outside, and streaked past the gardens towards the crowd of people in front of the mansion. He remembered seeing a few healers there.

"Woah," he felt Daichi mumble into his shoulder. "You're fast."

"And you're heavy," Sugawara retorted, before skidding to a stop in front of a line of injured patients with a few emergency healers already at work. "Severe magic deprivation and smoke inhalation," he quickly explained to the healer, who immediately got to work after he set him down.

Azumane, who must've been some sort of psychic, appeared nearly immediately after. "Daichi, you're okay!" He blubbered, tears appearing in his eyes.

"Already in tears, Asahi?" Daichi quipped. "After all that posturing about being independent and strong just a few days back to your dad?"

"I'm just glad you're okay!" Azumane complained. "Let me have that at least! That was really scary!"

When Sugawara slipped away, he heard Daichi ask, "Who was that?" To which Azumane sniffled back a, "I heard he's the great sage's apprentice or something." Sugawara had had enough however, and he slipped his way to the Lord of the castle (who was looking at his burning castle with a sort of dignified despair) and told him that the wards around his castle had dropped, asking if it was okay to leave now. The Lord promised that Azumane's group will have sufficient protection and made a not-very-subtle hint that he was welcome to head back to the capital to fetch reinforcements and supplies.

Leaving the transport and security of Azumane to the people who had that as their actual jobs, Sugawara heaved a long sigh and started the run back home. He had to report to Nekomata as fast as possible anyway, and the King needed to hear about the attack.

* * *

A week later, Sugawara was convinced. Sawamura Daichi was stalking him.

And wherever Sawamura was, Azumane wasn't far behind.

"What?" Sugawara sighed, pulling up his goggles as he sensed two footsteps approaching him from behind. The muted clink of Daichi's armour gave him doubly away as they pushed through the door and walked straight in. "I'm mixing a delicate compound for Nekomata right now."

"Being the Great Sage's apprentice must be so cool!" Daichi laughed, settling down on a stool a few steps away to watch, Asahi settling behind him as a nervous shadow, comical because of how he was taller than Daichi already by half a head. "No, finish what you're doing! I just wanted to ask if you could help me with my training again."

"Again?" Sugawara echoed, already mentally giving up because _damn_ could Sawamura be stubborn. Dripping the liquid he had in his mortar into a small container, he pulled off his goggles and stood up, walking out of the cottage. "I'm done anyway. Also, knock the next time you're entering someone's house!" At his frown, Daichi laughed.

"Sorry, Suga! I just got too excited to see you!"

Sugawara stared at him in disbelief (Sawamura had the annoying habit of shortening people's name the moment they met them), before looking accusingly at Asahi. "Keep him in line! Isn't he your vassal?"

Asahi nervously scratched his head. "Umm, I tried to make him knock on the door first today…" Came the peep out of his delinquent looking face. Then he withered when Sugawara kept looking at him with a judgemental look on his face, hunching his broad shoulders and looking miserable. At that, Sugawara massaged the bridge of his nose.

"That face is wasted on you," he informed Asahi blandly, before leading him to a random training ground. There, he trumped Daichi repeatedly just like all their previous training sessions.

Mid-way, Daichi dragged Asahi into the fray too (since Asahi couldn't depend on Daichi protecting him all the time right?), so Sugawara also gave him a crash-course on how to get thrashed in the most non-fatal way possible.

When he was the only one left standing over a collapsed Daichi and Asahi (he may have been feeling a little smug), he decided doing a small workout before lunch was _maybe_ not the worst thing to do.

* * *

"Come on!" Daichi yelled, battered face still with a damnable grimace that he probably thought was an encouraging smile. Sugawara was tempted to take a picture and show him that wasn't the case - his grimace of pure determination was actually making Asahi behind him shrink a little away (which was still quite hilarious to watch). "One more round!"

Sugawara sighed, lazily throwing a few kunai up and down before throwing three backwards at Daichi, who blocked the first one with his sword, the second with a hasty blue flicker of a barrier, but got hit straight in the neck by the third. To hammer it home, Sugawara took the second while Daichi choked in surprise to throw a few blunted wooden shuriken straight past him into Asahi, who bore the hits with a suffering silence.

"A-as amazing as ever, Suga," Asahi complimented, having gotten into the habit of shortening his name without permission as well.

Well, it wasn't as if he minded nowadays, but it was the principle of the thing.

"Why didn't you even try to dodge?" Sugawara replied instead. "No need to compliment me every time, Asahi. Just work on your own instincts more," he replied while glancing up from his book on advanced herbology. "Daichi's getting there at least."

"It's just, y-you're the same age as us, Suga, and you can do so many things..." Asahi fiddled with the hem of his delicately embroidered autumn yukata. Asahi's tutor had told him that Asahi needed to appear at a function or whatever, so Sugawara had stuck to only pummeling Daichi that day.

"Shoot, how?" Daichi collapsed and rolled onto the floor, massaging his throat with a resigned grimace. "I'm the same age as you, and I've trained all my life since I was eight!"

Sugawara shrugged, declining to comment but hopped over to give Daichi a hand up. "Even Inuoka can't beat me," Sugawara offered as some sort of comfort. "And he's captain now, so should that make you feel better?"

"No!" Daichi insisted, large frown on his face as he kept massaging his throat even after he got up. "You're the same age as me, so I want to be on the same level as _you._ I should be able to."

Leading the two back to Nekomata's cottage and up to his room, Sugawara offered some bruise cream that was getting dangerously low these days. Asahi settled on his bed with an awkward shuffle of a boy who didn't know what to do with his height, while Daichi sat on a stool next to his window. Sugawara just stayed standing, patient to wait while Daichi took the time to smear cream all over the bruises he'd have for a week if not for Nekomata's mixing magic.

"I'm a little different," Sugawara pointed out. "I'm a body enhancer, I use _othis_ only. You use a mix of both types of magic, of course you're going to run out of stamina faster than me," he shrugged.

"But you have all those fake ninja skills," Daichi insisted. "I'm not going to pry why you have the assassination specialty, but you've mastered all of those skills!"

Sugawara's attention snapped towards Daichi's disarming smile, who had finished with the cream and was screwing the jar shut.

"What did you just say?" Sugawara asked, heart rabbiting. He'd been pretty successful at pretending his assassination skills were more from covert ops, ninja as they were affectionately called. Even Inuoka hadn't figured it out.

"Don't worry," Daichi insisted. "Me and Asahi figured it out after I described how you took down those attackers the first time we met!" He grinned at Sugawara's expression, before his face fell a little at Sugawara's continued suspicion. "Hey, I'll never betray a friend," Daichi said, calmer and more insisting now.

Asahi, who had busied himself into staring out the window as soon as he felt tension in the room used the pause to bridge the gap of the conversation.

"Ah, Suga! Um, the smiley-faces on your flower pots look really cute!" Asahi smiled as he pointed. "You didn't seem the type to do so!"

Sugawara nodded at Asahi with an absentminded 'thanks', before focussing back on Daichi. "When did we become friends?"

Daichi stood up to hand the cream back to Sugawara, on level with him now. "The moment you saved us," Daichi replied, solid. "And no, nothing you say will change my mind."

And there it was, the glint in his eyes that now Sugawara realised was pure, determined _stubbornness._

Ugh. It was hard to deal with these types.

"Well, it's nearly time for Asahi's formal dressing for the fancy thing tonight," Sugawara answered as he ushered them out of his room, dodging any sort of response. "Come on, go away. You can bug me more tomorrow."

Ah. He shouldn't have mentioned _tomorrow_. Daichi's stubborn smile suddenly turned blinding again, calling back an "it's a promise!" while Sugawara duly reflected that he should _not_ be infected dammit.

* * *

Asahi smiled in commiseration over dinner a week later, having been invited by a more-than-welcoming Nekomata. Daichi, having been exhausted by training that day, had fell asleep at the dinner table, leaving Sugawara and Asahi to talk since Nekomata had abandoned them to go drinking with Inuoka's unit.

"He really looks up to you, you know," Asahi said quietly over dishes, having surprised Sugawara when a Lord's son hadn't shied from getting his hands dirty. "Daichi that is. I can't remember the last time he was so determined to befriend someone barring well... me."

Sugawara shot him a curious glance, demanding more of the story as he rinsed and dried a dish, putting it into a neat stack inside a basket that he would take to the palace kitchens later.

"I wasn't the most outgoing kid, and part of it was circumstantial as the Azumane's Lord's son, " Asahi laughed a little self-consciously. "Daichi just stumbled into my life. He was chasing a bird or something, I don't remember what he said, but it led him to falling over the wall into my private garden. He sprained an ankle," Asahi fondly remembered, rubbing soap over a particularly oily patch on a dish. "When he heard I had never met another person my age, Daichi made it his personal mission to 'fix' the situation."

"But why?" Sugawara asked, confused. He was still so confused over... _friendship_. Most relationships were give and take - but it seemed like his friendships always just gave without him _doing_ anything. Michimiya named him her friend and gave him a _life,_ Daichi had just barged in and demanded it (with Asahi following and insisting softly behind), but all he'd ever done for Michimiya was cracking a few jokes. All he'd ever done to Daichi bar their first meeting was repeatedly thrash him. Asahi was so soft-spoken they'd barely even _interacted_.

"For me, it was because I spoke against my father for the first time when I defended Daichi for trespassing in my garden," Asahi smiled shyly at him. "For you, you saved his life, and from what I heard, it was really um, impressive? Daichi had always aimed high, and you're just his next target."

Sugawara fell silent at that, thinking hard.

"I'll give you guys a chance," he told Asahi later, as he lugged Daichi's sleeping body back to Asahi's suite of rooms inside the castle. Asahi, surprisingly astute (and unsurprisingly sensitive), didn't ask for clarification of what he meant.

"That's all we ask," he replied with a smile.

* * *

The training yards were packed full to the brim for the unofficial 'tournaments' that the guards did for fun every year, and in the under fifteens category, Daichi grinned in decisive victory over a fifteen-year palace guard.

"A good fight!" They agreed as they shook arms, hands gripping each other's elbows as they slowly drained from their adrenaline high. The crowd cheered around them at the make-shift announcer's yelled declaration of Daichi as the winner, as the fifteen-year old gave Daichi a begrudgingly impressed smirk.

"You're going to be a monster one day," he promised Daichi, who gave a wry smile back.

"No, not yet. I still have a ways to go," was Daichi's reply, even his attention shifted to the subject of a fresh wave of cheering. Following his gaze, the fifteen-year old snorted.

"Yeah, here comes the real monster."

The crowd cheered as the announcer gleefully yelled, "And here comes the undefeated! The great! The mighty APPRENTICE OF THE GREAT SAGE, SUGAWARA KOUSHI!"

"Inuoka, shut up!" Came a familiar voice, retorting. "I swear, I don't know how you persuade me to do this every year!"

"Aww, have fun, Koushi!" The announcer replied, before getting back into the job. "Well, here comes the extra match all victors of their bracket get! A fight against our undefeated champion! First will be the winner of the fifteen and under bracket, one of our newer recruits from Azumane fief, Sawamura Daichi!"

Daichi grinned, feral, and Sugawara sighed, slapping his forehead. "Again? I thought this would be the _one day_ I wouldn't need to fight you!"

"Okay!" Inuoka shouted, "Each of you should declare a concession!"

"I won't use weapons," Sugawara replied, used to the drill, while Daichi confidently grinned.

"I will fight while protecting a non-combatant!" Daichi declared, before waving Asahi out from the crowd. Sugawara just sighed while everyone _ooooohed_ at such a difficult concession while fighting _Sugawara_ of all people.

"Well, everyone place your bets! We'll start in a few minutes, so be prepared!"

Sugawara rolled his shoulders as he started rotating his _qi,_ watching Daichi and Asahi's furtive movements with a tired eye. He was up mixing for a grumpy Nekomata most of the night, and he'd been forced to wake up early by Inuoka this morning. This was totally unfair. Probably end it as fast as he could?

Targeting Asahi it was then.

As soon as Inuoka whistled loudly, Sugawara kicked forward in a small whoosh of displaced air, landing behind Asahi to give him a gentle chop to the neck. That was until to his surprise, a blue repulsion ward lit up from under Asahi's hairline, pushing him a few steps away right into-

Sugawara ducked underneath a gleaming fist with wide eyes, sleepiness gone as the gauntlet whistled past mere _millimeters_ from his hair.

"Tch," Daichi cursed, even as he was quickly bringing a knee up, where Sugawara twisted away before being backed up into Asahi with a sword swing. Asahi, losing no chance, thrust out a palm that had another repulsion ward that Daichi had drawn on beforehand, pushing Sugawara forward back towards Daichi's back-swing.

With a rush of hurried _qi_ , Sugawara shot out an arm to intercept Daichi's sword swing, making his fingers as tough as iron as he stopped the swing by trapping the blade between his index and middle finger, before using a twist of his arm to try and disarm Daichi. However, having been used to this trick Daichi had also called upon _othis_ and steeled his grip, forcing it forward so that it was _Sugawara's_ arm being twisted instead of the sword flying across the arena.

That's the problem with repeat opponents, Sugawara thought with annoyance as he let the sword go and leapt sideways so that Asahi couldn't do that repulsion trick again. They got _used_ to you, and as an assassin that was just plain stupid.

Daichi leapt sideways with him, in a burst of speed that was provided by Asahi propelling him with _another_ repulsion seal, and Sugawara grimaced as he was forced to block another one of Daichi's powerful blows, not getting the chance to regroup when Daichi skidded back from the block to launch himself back at him again. When did Daichi's enhancement get so good, Sugawara wondered as he dodged yet again by a narrower degree than normal.

Still, Daichi may be stronger and getting faster, but Sugawara was _still faster_. Sugawara stopped holding back and circulated _qi_ freely, using it to stop his momentum, hit Daichi's hand sideways so his swing would overextend and race past him to Asahi. As many repulsion wards he may have, Daichi couldn't have them inscribed _everywhere_. Just hit him in the gut or something.

Asahi's eyes widened at where Sugawara had disappeared in front of Daichi full swing, knowing his eyes wouldn't be fast enough to truly track Sugawara when he turned up the speed. But he knew his cues, so the moment he saw Sugawara disappear in a flicker, Asahi stepped backwards.

Sure enough, Sugawara landed in front of him... right into the trap Asahi had been standing on top of. Asahi activated the seals Daichi had stealthily drawn into the ground early this morning, and on of Sugawara's feet sank into the rock. And before he could pull it out, Asahi ran away from the seal to a safe place in the corner of the field.

"All yours, Daichi!" Asahi yelled, safely far away. Daichi ran over immediately, and pointed his sword at Sugawara's back.

"Yield!" Daichi yelled gleefully while Sugawara experimentally pulled at the foot that was sunk past the slight dirt and into harder rock. "You can't move anymore!"

"That's what you think," Sugawara retorted, twisting around to stare at Daichi. "But I'm impressed that my talks about traps and strategy stuck with you, and I'm tired. So I yield."

The sudden uproar from their audience reminded the two that they weren't in one of their private training sessions. Inuoka was especially braying about how 'THE UNDEFEATED GOT DEFEATED AT LAST, THOUGH I GOTTA ADMIT IT WAS MORE TAG-TEAMING THAN A TRUE ONE-ON-ONE AS RULES STATE YOU KNOW' and Sugawara rolled his eyes again. "Hey, Daichi," Sugawara looked back at the other boy, who was still basking in his win. One win to two hundred and seventy three losses! It was truly _beautiful_. "Free me from this rock already."

"On one condition!" Daichi said brightly. "You have to join me and Asahi for dinner every Friday from now on!"

Sugawara grimaced. Really?

"C'mon, Suga," Daichi laughed. "It's not that bad, being with us two!"

Asahi slowly came back to them, nodding. "Yeah, I have a few games that I brought back from home in my rooms, Suga! It'll be more fun to play with three people!"

Sugawara tugged on his foot and sighed. "Alright," he sighed, as his _qi_ went back to his core and he felt totally drained as a result. "I'll join you for dinner tonight."

"Tonight, and every Friday after!" Daichi insisted, the stubborn glint in his eyes not appeased by Sugawara's half-hearted agreement.

"Yeah, that. Free me already."

Daichi looked entirely too smug for the entire dinner that night, so Sugawara used some sleight of hand to manipulate the card game that Asahi was trying to explain to him (not telling Asahi, of course, that he already knew the game already). So what if they only realised he was cheating after eight spectacular wins in a row? Sugawara laughed at Asahi's rare outraged face and Daichi's silent plotting one. Their outraged cries gave life to his soul.

The next Friday, Sugawara was soundly trounced at a game he _actually_ didn't know how to play. They then proceeded to try sneak to the kitchens for snacks before they got caught taking some fancy preparatory bread for tomorrow. Sugawara's quick-thinking got them out of a potentially hairy mess, while Daichi just stood there smiling and Asahi tried not to look too suspicious and looming (he failed).

And well, at that card game... fair is fair. If the next afternoon Sugawara had thrown a few more blunted kunai than usual, who could say it was from any sort of petty grudge?

Slowly, Sugawara learnt to look forward to the daily mid-afternoon knock on his door, grumbling for Nekomata's sake whenever he opened it to see a scary-determined smiling Daichi and the soft-spoken hellos of Asahi.

* * *

Somewhere between Daichi's plans for TRAINING GREATNESS, Asahi's well-meaning bumbling and Sugawara's emergency talk-out-of-bad-situations charm, they became friends.

* * *

"What's that weird black box?" Sugawara asked Nekomata one day, a package that he received from a flighty crow that didn't leave after it had delivered the package, instead hopping over to Sugawara's shoulder and preening his hair. It had actually fallen asleep while doing so, and was resting in the corner on a pillow now.

Nekomata grumbled. "Why are you so curious nowadays?"

Sugawara shrugged. "Chou infected me? Come on, tell me."

"It's a recording from an old friend," Nekomata answered. "She's a witch who can see the future. It's…" Nekomata trailed off, before rocking on his wheelchair. It was getting creaky, one of the nails a little loose, and Sugawara counted five creaks before Nekomata started the conversation again. "Koushi…"

"Yeah?" Sugawara stopped sharpening his tantō.

"How old are you this year?"

"…Fourteen. Why?"

"Six years already, huh. How time flies," Nekomata chuckled. "I'll hit one-thirty in another two years! Amazing! Have you been happy here in all these six years, Koushi?"

"I have," Sugawara answered slowly. "What's going to happen, Nekomata?" Sugawara had never involved himself into Chou's politics, but he did know that Nekomata had been looking more and more tired lately. And now this? A prophecy?

Nekomata ignored him though, rustling an aged hand through his plant-hair (clovers this season) with a satisfied smile.

"Good. I've done a good job then." Nekomata sank into his chair even more bonelessly, staring out the window into the indigo sunset. "Koushi, I've left you some things underneath the sink. Open it when the time comes. You'll know. And remember no matter where your destiny goes, we'll always be here for you. And hey, Koushi?"

"Yeah?"

"If I asked you to do something difficult for me... would you do it?"

There was no need to think about the answer.

"I'd do anything."

Nekomata silently continued rocking on the chair then, not unsmiling, but not frowning either. He just nodded, accepted it, before changing the topic to complaining about Naoi's tendency to make him go to formal banquets and parties.

Sugawara wondered what all that was about.

* * *

"Where's Asahi?" Sugawara asked Daichi over a late breakfast, who also looked slightly concerned.

"He said that he needed to talk to King Naoi about something, but he didn't mention anything about it taking so long." They sat there for an extra half hour before Asahi stumbled through the door, having somehow grown even ganglier and lanky as a fourteen year old.

"It's unbefitting for a future lord to be late, Asahi," Daichi called out with a grin on his face as he teased Asahi, before his smile faltered. "What's wrong?"

Asahi shook his head. "Daichi…" He glanced around Nekomata's hut before closing the door behind him and flumped onto a chair. "Prepare a carriage for us to leave…now, as soon as possible if you can." His voice was even more timid than normal, and Sugawara and Daichi exchanged a glance.

"What's wrong?"

"I can't explain," Asahi shook his head, but his eyes found Sugawara's. "Suga, join us. Please believe me, you'll… you'll be better off with us! I promise I'll protect you. We're friends, so I can't… I can't. I'm not supposed to, I need to leave immediately but… Suga, you can join us. _Please._ "

As much as Daichi was Asahi's friend as well as his guard, Daichi knew when to act out and when to listen. "I'll arrange a carriage if you say so, Asahi. I don't know what's happening, but it sounds bad, Suga." Daichi looked at Sugawara, brows furrowed. "If Asahi says that something is that dangerous, we'll always have a space for you, Suga," Daichi said, stolid. "It'll help me in protecting this dumbass in any case, so you'll never be dead weight."

Asahi was too upset to even react to Daichi's casual usage of dumbass. Something clicked in Sugawara's mind that this situation was actually serious.

So Sugawara analysed Asahi, his shaky fingers, Daichi's confused concern, and thought back to Nekomata, yesterday night.

"Wait a second," Sugawara said, before heading towards the sink. And written on top of the box, in large letters in Nekomata's handwriting was _[DON'T GO WITH THEM]._ Pulling the box out, he placed it on the table. "There you go. My answer. Nekomata must know best."

Asahi's face crumpled like the world was ending, staring at the box, before looking back at Sugawara. And okay, maybe Sugawara was growing extremely concerned. Sure Asahi loved being cheesy and sentimental, and got scared of a lot of things (the only worrywart of their group, really), but Asahi had never been so… _crushed_ before. Just when he was about to say something encouraging, Asahi visibly drew himself together, bowing to Sugawara in a way they've... never done, actually.

"May we meet again, Suga," Asahi said, quietly fierce, before striding out the door.

Daichi, clearly torn and as lost as he was, shrugged.

"I'll beat up Asahi later for not telling us what's going on," Daichi promised. "Maybe he's just being dramatic?" He finished, clearly doubting that himself. "But just in case its something serious… here you go," Daichi fished a small metal coin out of his pocket and handed to Sugawara. "It's nothing big, Suga, but if you ever visit Azumane fief, that coin will lead you to me and Asahi. Just show it to someone official looking."

With that, Daichi gave him a clap on the shoulder and left. The whole thing happened in five minutes, and just felt anticlimactic and unsatisfying– Sugawara had no idea what was going on, or why, or _when_ , since Nekomata mentioned the future and clearly the King had told Asahi some part of what was making Nekomata so concerned (but still, why _Asahi?)_. That rest of that day he spent in paranoia, packing all sorts of weapons into the magical bag Nekomata had helped him make, stocking on water and food, and assessed his travelling cloaks and clothes before throwing them all in too. Just in case. It always paid to be prepared.

That night, Nekomata never returned for dinner. Sugawara, who couldn't stand this suspense anymore when everything just seemed so... _normal_ , opened the box.

Inside, tucked into a pocket of space was Nekomata's staff, covered in runes that would only ever let a sage use it as a magic conduit. Sugawara pulled it out, puzzled why Nekomata would leave this for him when he was clearly not a sage, but put it in his own bag anyway.

Next to the pocket was a normal section of box, where there were three small envelopes stacked on top of each other. On top was a letter written in Nekomata's familiar scrawl.

 _[Koushi, I have an urgent request for you,]_ was the first line of the letter. _[In the three envelopes are three important things that you must give to three people. The white envelope goes to Queen Kiyo, of the Witches' forest. The grey goes to Duke Tsukishima, in the Capital of the western continent. The black goes to the High Priest of the great library in Fa._

 _Head for the western Capital first – focus on crossing the desert to the Duke, as it'll help throw off anyone chasing you– don't worry about directions or a map, I've seen destiny guide you to the Capital. The staff I gave to you because I have a hunch you'll meet a person who will need it. Further explanation on what is going on is within the grey envelope, where in the Duke's care it'll be safe for you to learn what's happening, and hopefully gain allies in the process._

 _I'm sorry I couldn't give you more time to grow up. You're the only one I can trust now. Keep safe, and don't fail._

 _Cheers!_ _Nekomata_ _]_

Sugawara read the letter, traced the small cat picture Nekomata had doodled and sighed. That letter did tell him somewhat of what he had to do, but didn't really say _anything._ He wasn't about to refuse Nekomata though, so he brushed his hair back and thought of Asahi's stress in needing to get out of Chou as quickly as possible. This was probably related right? He should get a move on then...

He'd barely packed the three envelopes into a small secure pocket in his bag when the door breezed open behind him, and a warm breath tickled his ear.

" _Found you."_

* * *

 _Extras_

 _Daichi has always been an unfailing optimist. However, just because he's an optimist doesn't mean he's not a_ realist _. One of the most defining and reliable traits that Daichi has (that everyone relies on him for) is his ability to look at everything with a calm eye and still say and believe stuff like 'we can do it!' It's unsurprising that he's held leadership jobs for most of his life from this sort of attitude._

 _Daichi is exasperated with Asahi throughout the multiverse. In all universes, Daichi always looks at a kind, pushover, tofu-soul Asahi and thinks 'he has so much potential, he can do_ better _'. Asahi usually appreciates the looking underneath the underneath that Daichi does quite a bit, but also really wants the nice kind treatment that Daichi gives to everyone else. It seems nice._

 _Asahi didn't only research Nishinoya and Tanaka when he was attempting to become more of a 'wild' type. He looked up Youtube videos with beauty gurus and style makeover tutorials. He bought four types of hair combs on suggestion, and posed in front of his mother's mirror for four days straight (his own was too small, and he'd never previously used it until his makeover attempt because even he didn't like his own face - it was scary). He thought of spikes and hair gel, ponytails and hair cuts. He thought of making his eyebrows sharper, or even wearing some cool guyliner. The thing is, in the end he chose a more natural look after he heard that most of those hair products would make him bald one day, and even Kiyoko (when asked for advice) stated the way he was pulling his hair would make his hairline recede.  
_ _His. Worst. Nightmare._

 _Daichi had always appreciated Sugawara and Asahi just for sticking by him, and voting him team captain even as everything fell apart in Karasuno._


	4. The Trust of Sugawara Koushi

"Found you."

The voice was feminine, slightly mocking and amused. Not that Sugawara wasn't prepared though, he'd already swung an elbow backwards to where the throat of the voice would be, whipping his head sideways. Instead of the slight elastic give of a crushed trachea though, his elbow was caught by an open hand.

"Still always opening with a backwards spin when approached from behind?" A cheerful voice chirped in his ear.

Sugawara had always been good with reading people. There was no ill-intent. But… with an experimental tug on his elbow, the hand holding it clenched into the hollow of his bones. Settling instead, Sugawara cast a curious glance over his shoulder.

"Who are you? You breached the Nekomata's defences. That's kind of impressive!" Sugawara huffed a disarming laugh.

"Can't say," the voice replied, finally letting go of his elbow and pulling away. The woman didn't pull down her mask though, and the room had gotten too dark to really see by the lone lamp Sugawara had lit, even when a stray strand of _qi_ went to enhance his eyesight. "Just someone in the destiny your Sage mentioned, if you want a little more detail. I'm only here to give you a warning, and collect something."

Sugawara paused for a long moment as his eyes sharpened and the angles cleared as his _qi_ forcefully widened his pupils. Analysing that mask – the round brown eyes with the short lashes crinkled into a warm smile – before straightening up and turning around. His fingers traced the hems of his bag absently before replying with another nonchalant huff of a laugh.

"Well, you know the old man? Alright then. What do you need?"

"You have a bird resting here right? I need to collect it."

"The crow that brought Nekomata the message a few days back?" Sugawara asked in surprise, staring out the window. Her eyes rested like a weight on the back of his head. "Umm, yeah, it's resting downstairs. What else do you need? Food is in the kitchen."

"Nothing else, just a warning that you need to get out of the city in the next ten minutes." Sugawara felt her gaze resting along his shoulders, before shifting away. "Don't notify anyone, just leave, or you'll get caught. Those packages that the sage gave you needs to be delivered as quickly as possible."

The woman turned to leave then, but paused mid-step.

"…Are those faces drawn on your flower pots?"

Since Sugawara was still facing the window, he glanced down and looked at his line of small pot-plants, before nodding.

"Yeah. It's so that I don't forget a dear friend of mine."

There was a thoughtful pause then, before there was a warm chuckle behind him, the sort of careful laughter that Sugawara had grown out of years ago. Then a fleeting pat on his head.

"Still a stupid nugget, I see," the woman called over her shoulder, before slipping downstairs in a brush of wind. The next second, Sugawara felt no-one again, the presence out the door and towards the Palace. Too late for things like, 'Have you met Nekomata?' and 'Don't go, we can free you' or 'I have so many things to show you.'

 _Can't say_ , she said. With that, Sugawara had known nothing he said would let him save her. She still had something to do…

Sugawara let the palace draw his gaze, pensive.

Nekomata leaving. Asahi's haunted look, Daichi's puzzled acceptance, and Michimiya…

What was going on? He looked at the note that Nekomata had left for him, before forcefully uncurling his fingers from the tight clench he had on his bag.

Ten minutes, she said? To get out of the Chou's capital, and head towards his first location?

Ruffling his hair through his fingers, Sugawara mocked himself a little. As the sage's apprentice, he could've stuck his head into any of talks that Asahi had attended these past few weeks, but he _didn't_. Hating politics isn't enough of an excuse to not support a friend in need.

Not that, of course, Asahi had asked him or Daichi for help.

The thought stung a little.

Nothing to do about that now though, so Sugawara sniffed all the _feelings_ in and swung his packed spatial bag onto his back, gave the room one last check for any potentially helpful travelling supplies before jumping out the window. It was only a few minutes later when Sugawara was swinging himself over the palace gates onto some rich dude's house when he heard it. It was the sound of the universe shifting, the gears of a particularly difficult ritual starting to grind forward. He felt the _qi_ of the world changing through his skin, funnelling through space to stream into the Palace. In a moment, he held his breath.

 _Click._

A large flock of birds roused and flew as a swarm into the air, chirping a cacophony of panic as they spiralled into the sky. Dogs barked urgently in their yards, and the next breath Sugawara took was full of a question that he heard somewhere, in the back of his mind. An echo. A creak, as something opened.

" _Where are you?"_ The universe whispered.

Sugawara's heart suddenly jerked, jack-rabbiting in his chest as his head instinctively turned to chase the whisper. In the corner of his eye, a white light bloomed from the depths of the castle.

Then the whole world burst into blue heat that faded into red and orange, drying his mouth and cracking his skin into red and white flakes. The roof he had been standing in cracked into black, then white ash. The neighbourhood woke with choked screams and gasps before the whole area turned still. The dogs that barked suddenly quieted. When Sugawara focused past the heat, all the heartbeats in the palace's immediate radius had suffocated to death.

Sugawara's mouth turned into a grim line, as he sunk his foot into ash. In a creak of dying timber, the husk of a black house collapsed from the force of his kick as he ran towards the edge of the city. Even as he ran, he sensed tens of dark presences streaking out of the Palace turning in pursuit.

The bells started to toll.

* * *

"Chase him!" Five shadows flitted around the corner, with another two reinforcements from a guard tower joining him. In the background, a woman screamed as a flaming roof started falling down. Sugawara's feet twitched to help, but a snap and a gurgle told him it was too late.

Sugawara gritted his teeth, feeling the strain of his muscles even through the use of _qi_. Even if his _qi_ underneath Nekomata's direction of constant flow didn't run out, it didn't mean that his muscles didn't stop tearing as he forced them to their limits. Flitting through the alleyways at speeds that burnt tear tracks into his eyes was _hell_ on the knees. Sugawara had never been as good as true movement masters, who could run faster than a roc at maximum speed for days on end. He could hold it for five hours at most when he _wasn't_ dashing around alleyways.

"Around the corner! Call reinforcements!" A man yelled. Sugawara sensed a sharp killing intent to his far left, before he took a breath to duck, a flash of a thrown dagger inches away from nailing his neck.

"We can't let the sage's apprentice escape!" Another muffled voice shouted, far too close for his liking.

He'd been going so well until the third tier of gates out of Chou City, before in his attempt to save a baker he'd known, he'd triggered a trap. Then suddenly, five squadrons had leapt up into the air around him in ambush as if they'd been _waiting_ for him.

His mind flashed to Michimiya, but shook the thought away. She'd never betray him.

"The sage's apprentice is close to the King Naoi, the Sage, and the Azumane heir," someone roared at his subordinates, above the crackle of flames. Someone's windows cracked and exploded, sending heat and shards of sharp red glass to cut the air. "He's the only one in the plot left to find! If any of you let him escape before we can tear information out of him, I'll report all of you to get beheaded!"

Sugawara skidded through alleyways, heart hurting slightly when he saw all the familiar stalls all crackling down in flame.

His ankles ached when he took another sharp turn to the left, ducking low.

A hail of needles rained from the rooftop ahead of him, and Sugawara cursed, going too fast to stop. Swinging his pack up, the needles sunk into his bag instead, arms shaking from the force.

Sugawara's mouth twisted into a bitter smile. He'd thought he would've been important enough that the enemy would have wanted to capture him alive, but apparently, he'd overestimated his importance. There were ways to get information from a corpse, after all.

Slinging his bag back towards his back, he let his feet skid him through a low hollowed hole in a wall, letting his feet land on a wall for him to jump back up, eyes narrowing when he found what he'd been aiming for.

The alleyway lead straight to a small grate where rainwater usually slid through to a channel that lead straight to a river. Long ago, a water mage had spelled this grate as an emergency escape for any official Chou citizen during attack, while any foreigner would be blocked by a strong barrier.

So Sugawara dived straight into the metal without a thought and the grate rippled and slid around him, only to flash white light and block the few daggers that had tried to follow him. With a quick hand, Sugawara swiped all the daggers fallen near the grate and retreated back quickly, eyes narrowed as his breaths were finally let out hard, now that he was safe.

"It's a barrier!" Sugawara heard shouts and curses behind him as he quickly found his feet, and minding the low ceiling, scuttled down through in a low crouch.

"We can't fail! This must either lead to the rainwater or sewage system. Go!"

He wouldn't be safe for long.

The gutter only lead to one exit – to the edge of one of subsidiaries of one of the great rivers of the east, the Naka river.

Down, dark, and slippery, Sugawara's boosted eyes leant all the dark shadows shape as he followed the small etched markings on the walls that indicated where the escape was. When his eyes caught a glimmer of light near the exit, he let the _qi_ from his eyes ebb to adjust, slowing down in caution.

Just when he was about to turn the corner, a sudden hand on his arm made him stiffen and jerk his elbow up to hit his assailant in the face. The shadow ducked, and Sugawara was about to surge into an upper cut when the figure put his hands up in surrender.

"Stop!"

Sugawara paused at the harsh whisper, recognising the voice.

" _Inuoka_?" Sugawara's eyes found the guard's face, finding the cheerful smile dimmed and one of his strong eyebrows half singed away. A bruise bloomed all the way from his neck up to his left ear, even as fingers ruefully rubbed a new one on his chin. Sugawara winced in apology. "Sorry for the hit," he offered, "but why are you here?" Why was the captain of the guards alone in one of the evacuation routes?

"They're waiting for you out there," Inuoka whispered, not taking the elbow to the chin to heart as he nodded towards the exit. "They knew about this exit. Somehow. They're all waiting outside, trying to break through. No-one can break the barriers yet, but they're getting closer."

"What? No, wait, why are you here?"

Inuoka's lips somehow quivered into a smile, and Sugawara's heart dreaded.

"I was in one of the groups escorting civilians in emergency evacuation." And now that Sugawara had calmed down, he noticed Inuoka's whole body trembling. Slowly, the smell of blood also seeped through the air, from the exit behind him.

Sugawara didn't dare to look.

"I only escaped because I was bringing up the rear."

Self-loathing tinged the whole of Inuoka's defeated appearance.

"What do we do now?" Sugawara asked, unwilling to leave Inuoka like this.

"There's another exit, one that I know only because Nekomata showed me when I got lost here when I was a kid." He heaved himself onto shaky feet, horrible smile still on his face. He faced Sugawara. "I was waiting here for any other survivors or evacuation groups, but you were the only one that came. You wouldn't abandon Chou like this if you didn't have something important to do, right?" The small smile wavered, as Inuoka tried to believe.

Sugawara nodded immediately. "Right. Of _course,_ Inuoka."

Another distant explosion rocked the small channel they crouched in, dust falling onto their hair.

"Then you have to leave." Inuoka closed his eyes, before looking back down the way Sugawara had come. "Let's go."

Inuoka moved slower than Sugawara, being in heavy armour and had less ability in boosting magics, but when he stumbled he hauled himself up with a frown of determination, and when he fell, he waved off Sugawara's hand with an angry grimace at himself.

Soon, they arrived at a small wall. A dead end.

"Here," Inuoka whispered, tracing a small character onto the stone. It lit up into a dim yellow before the wall shimmered, and faded. "Go through."

"Come with me," Sugawara said, even as he knew the answer. Inuoka shook his head in refusal. "Your mother?" Sugawara guessed.

"In the group I was escorting," Inuoka responded, voice bleak.

The blood from the exit.

 _Oh no._

"What?" Sugawara responded, numb. Inuoka's mother had been one of the first people in Chou to truly try to make him feel accepted – the most insistent one on making him smile. He was around their family so much that she'd basically adopted him as her son, always chiding Inuoka to take care of him. She'd always been proud of the fact that her soup was better than the palace kitchens, enough so that Sugawara had found an excuse at least once per week to crash at her place.

"She was in one of the later groups because she thought of you," Inuoka replied, brown eyes closed. "She was worried. They attacked the palace first, we all saw where the first explosion was lit. The people chasing you weren't _quiet_ about the fact you escaped and they were trying to capture you."

"Inuoka, I…" Sugawara tried, before his throat strangled him. He didn't know what to say.

"Go," Inuoka replied, determined. A gauntleted hand pushed him forward. "I have to go back, but you have something to do. I'll rest a little more easily when I know you're safe. At least I'm not going to lose you."

Sugawara gripped his arm in a tight squeeze, not knowing how else to convey what he was feeling, words fluttering in his throat.

"Go!"

Sugawara let himself be pushed, and the last thing he saw was Inuoka drawing another character into the air. Then the wall was back. The sound of Inuoka's footsteps on the other side left after a few seconds, and with a heart full of regret, Sugawara did the same.

When Sugawara struggled through an old trapdoor in an abandoned inn outside the city, he immediately hid his presence as well as he could, pulled his hood up and ran towards the west roads. When he found the roads were filled with panicking people, he ran into the forest instead. Behind him, the echoes of the great bells, the general roar of fire and fighting, and the screen of smoke all faded as he pushed his speed to the limit. Faster. _Faster._

A few hours later, when he was slogging through a river to lose any scent trails, when Chou City was only a distant red speck in the night, he felt like he heard the mighty roar of a beast. It was a pressure of ancient might that made the hairs of his arms stand on end, distant but overpowering. Sugawara turned his head back just in time to see a great shadow rising over the smoke, a large arm rising up, larger, hundred times, a thousand times larger than the small dot of a city wreathed in golden flames— then the shadow came down and the red light in the distance disappeared.

* * *

"Need to travel over the desert to the West, my boy?" A cheerful merchant called him over, waving from a relatively large store. "I have all your desert needs right here, along with a few camels!" The man's jowls jiggled as he over-enthusiastically pointed at a few bored looking camels, whose long lashes blinked melancholically over the sand dunes they'd crossed on the whims of humans hundreds of times before. "If you buy over twenty gold coins of my wares, perfectly practical for such a long, hard, journey, I usually lend a camel half price! Since you're a little younger, I'll give you the special deal of fifteen gold, how about that?"

Carefully eyeing the camel being offered for hire, Sugawara opted out. At this point, the camel was way too slow for his needs. It would only paint a large convenient target for his pursuers.

"Give me ten of those water skins please," Sugawara asked politely, and the merchant drooped in disappointment when his bid didn't work.

"Alright, five silver coins for ten water skins."

The simple purchase didn't take long, and Sugawara soon tucked ten full skins into his bag, glad all the water didn't make his bag any heavier.

"…By the way, any news about Chou?"

The question just slipped out without much permission, and Sugawara immediately scolded himself in the head. It would've been better if he hadn't mentioned Chou. People had ways to track subjects, especially if he was thinking about _Wu_.

The merchant had already turned away at that point, but he twisted one jiggling chin over his shoulder as his whole face melted into one flabby soft expression of sympathy.

"Ah, you a refugee then?"

Was that what they were calling them, nowadays? Sugawara wondered. Refugees?

"Yeah," Sugawara answered shortly.

"You're awfully fast to have crossed from Chou to Wakan's desert outpost in a week," the merchant mused. "Well, tell your parents that after the attack on the Chou City, it seems like Wu's influence is spreading. From what I've heard from the merchant's grapevine… Everywhere from the Palace to the Nishi-fief had joined the information blackout. No-one knows anything." The merchant paused, before giving a huff. "It's quite frustrating really."

Sugawara's brows creased.

The Azumane fief was only two fiefs northwest of Nishi.

Asahi's sombre near panicked plead for Sugawara to come with them echoed in his mind. Even his fief wasn't safe now.

Sugawara turned and smiled at the merchant, before asking whether he had any maps with him. Although it cost another five silvers, it couldn't be helped.

He'd planned to just cross the desert the fastest way to the city Nekomata had indicated on his map. Duke Tsukishima lorded over one of the larger frontier Capitals of the West, in a country exotically named with weirdly hard syllables named Barzak. It was just a remnant of history however – Nekomata had assured him the continent mostly spoke the same language.

Alright.

Sugawara glanced backwards carefully, before adjusting his hood and striding forward. One water skin could last him a three days, especially if he was running. Ten skins equalled approximately thirty days. The bag had been made by Nekomata to never weigh more than a certain amount, and its spatial pocket was big enough to hold all his camping supplies, the water, and enough food, as well as weapons and other equipment. The great desert usually required at least four weeks by camel, especially since the normal traveller tagged along the great merchant routes.

Sugawara estimated that he could probably run straight through the desert in a week and a half, if he only took rests during the day and ran throughout the cold night to help regulate temperature.

He narrowed his eyes as he wandered nonchalantly through the crowd and out the outpost until there was no-one left around him. Then he promptly circulated his _qi_ , and flew forward.

* * *

"A spy?"

When he spotted the suspiciously non-shimmering patch in his vision of the horizon as he camped the sunlight out (what amateurs, they did know what heat haze should look like right?), Sugawara waited until night-time before he kicked off cautiously, looking at the map and speeding towards his destination. However, he had underestimated the number of pursuers.

In the clear night of the desert, Sugawara didn't notice the line of bombs that they had circled around his camp. Sugawara cursed when the explosion hit, only having the power to shift some of his _qi_ from speed straight to his skin to defence, but even then the force burnt half of his leg, and a bit of red sand landed on his neck.

It was simple enough to throw one of his more poisonous bombs backwards, and target the three who escaped breathing it in with daggers to the throat. One down, two to go.

He started to engage the one who looked slower in combat, a furious spar that didn't touch on the fluid elegance of any of the martial forms that Sugawara liked to practice that he'd learnt from Daichi. Something rawer, something that reminded him of _before_ Chou.

When he was finishing off the enemy by crushing the stomach with his foot, the other one stopped attacking from afar and ran away instead. Underneath the night, Sugawara gave chase while whipping out some smaller shuriken.

In the end, he only wounded the pursuer enough to set them back around two weeks or so, but they were both equally as fast, enough so that Sugawara chose to give up in the end.

He took two minutes to brush himself off, another to breathe down the adrenaline, and half a second to stare at the stars and the moon and his map and swear.

"Don't do this to me," Sugawara muttered, frantically comparing the constellations and his footprints and the map. "I can't be lost, right?"

Well, when the next morning came, even the sun didn't help orientating him to continue towards Barzak's Desert Outpost. In fact, he didn't even know the way back to Wakan.

Sugawara stifled a sigh that was building up, before imagining what his very upright, optimistic friends would do (i.e. not Asahi). Inuoka would use exercise as an excuse to keep moving, probably. Daichi would give a weirdly inspiring speech, most likely about 'don't give up, Suga!' and 'perseverance and hard work is the key to success!'

What were they doing now?

"Come on," Sugawara told his legs. He wiggled his toes. His shoes gave a twitch, leaking some sand into his pants. "Yup, we've got to go now."

He heaved his bag up and continued onwards.

* * *

The desert was a silent place – unlike the waves and the roar of the ocean that he lived the first few years of his life hearing when he slept. It wasn't the quiet of the forests where he mostly camped out when he got missions, listening to small bugs and birds and the brush of leaves within a canopy. It wasn't even the quiet of a city in the late evenings, where everyone had gone to bed and the only things were the echoes from the inside of houses, where you knew things were alive.

The desert was vast, and when there was no wind, the only thing Sugawara felt was heat, the crunch of sand beneath his feet, his breath slow and still as he carefully paced himself quickly, but not stamina draining. At night, the sky stretched above him, and the air was bitterly cold.

If he got cold, he just moved a little faster to stay warm.

Sometimes, he thinks he hears people, or a camel. Maybe if he had travelled with a caravan like most sane (normal) people, he wouldn't have noticed all this _silence_ as much.

Maybe he should've hired a camel, only to talk to. But then, he would have to carry it over the distance since camels were too slow for his needs, and camels didn't really like getting carried, generally speaking.

Sugawara sighed. There was just no winning, was there?

When he crested another dune, he looked back and saw no-one. He looked forward, and saw a near flat horizon, stretching further and further into a gold haze. Dawn had come.

Slowly, a breeze blew, just enough displacement to ruffle a few strands of his hair, and shifting the golden dunes slowly, the edges eroding away only to shift to the edges of another dune and Sugawara continued on.

* * *

When he was on his last half-skin of water, delayed by more than three weeks that he'd expected, Sugawara saw the first difference in the rolling dunes – a shadow in the distance that crested into a large shadow. The start of a mountain range.

Sugawara changed his direction slightly and trudged towards it, having used all his _qi_ to just push his body normally now. His hood hid his face from the late afternoon sun, having decided to start moving sooner, since he was moving slower now. As much as he'd delayed his pursuers by injuries, it didn't mean by retreating and sending in someone fresh, they couldn't catch up to him. _Wu_ trained the best agents – legendary for their ability to run for a week straight with only water, track even through slogging rain, and kill targets even when they were hidden in the deepest, most protected prisons or castles. He'd know, after all.

So he didn't stop, channelling _qi_ through muscles long overused and thinned. Slowly, he crested the mountains diagonally, tentatively squeezing his some of his remaining _qi_ into his eyes and scanning for any path over the mountain without outright making a path for himself.

…There. A small outpost, nearly invisible in the mountain's shadow.

Sugawara swallowed another sigh, but allowed his heart to be bolstered when the tiny huts grew closer.

And, in the middle, a small slip of a boy that stood firm in the middle of the only road, staring straight at him.

Waiting.

When Sugawara first met the boy's eyes, forcing a cheerful smile onto his face, he paused.

Somehow, the boy felt familiar. The dark blue of his eyes, large, intent on a paling face. Thin lips that pursed together, hands that tightened their grip on an old shirt. Something in him looked at the boy and didn't like how sharp his cheekbones cut his face, the smallness of his hands.

Even when his mind started filing away all the suspicious signs of _familiarity_ (impossible, he'd never crossed the desert. An agent?), he felt… happy.

 _Kageyama Tobio._

The name rolled around his mind like a warm burst of amused exasperation, making Sugawara pause on sheer instinct, blink back to look at the boy another turn in question.

(If, that night, he said he wasn't surprised when small fingers touched his sleeve, he'd be lying. The fact that Kageyama's heart rate calmed at the touch after his nightmare doubly so. In the morning, Sugawara spent a few minutes staring at the boy, wondering.

Who did he remind Kageyama of?)

* * *

That night in the small desert hut, he dreamed of a festival back in Chou, the year after he met Daichi. He'd always avoided the Children's Festival – there was always work to do when the city was busy with laughter and crowds. However, that year Inuoka's mother was horrified to find out he knew none of the fairy tales that the floats of Chou's Children's Festival were based on, and sent Sugawara out with a firm order to _'find someone to talk to right now!'_

When Sugawara expressed more interest in finishing his antidote research for Nekomata, Inuoka's mother sighed, before bribing him with an extra free bowl of mapo tofu from the street stall she was planning to make for the festival.

So Sugawara was tasked to find his friends and ask them to teach these fairy tales to him. However, when he found Inuoka, he was too busy with arranging the security for the festival. All the yelling and the bustling inside the Palace Guardhouse was a little intimidating, so instead of badgering them for stories like a five year old, he wandered inside bearing strong cups of tea instead. He may have been greeted with tears of joy and cheers.

Being their caffeine god was a nice feeling.

Anyway, he left soon trying to find Asahi, who was in his daily etiquette lesson, learning the twenty-three ways to brew tea. In the few seconds that Sugawara peered his head through, Asahi was only on his fourteenth type of bow. And since the palace tutor was a scary, scary person when provoked (he intimidated even _Nekomata_ ), Sugawara gave up right away and tracked down Daichi instead.

Daichi, who always had a break whenever Asahi was doing his palace training and lessons, was slouched on a bridge, swinging his legs as he sat on one of the endlessly elegant bridges of the palace garden with a small fishing rod in hand.

"Daichi!" Sugawara waved, and his friend visibly perked up when he turned. The bored face quickly wiped into a full blown grin.

"Suga!" Daichi called as he reeled his line in carefully, dropping the pole with a loud _clack_ on the smooth wooden boards of the bridge. Sugawara winced when it seemed to chip some of the dark lacquer. "I couldn't find you earlier at your cottage, so I decided to try the fishing spot everyone was raving about!"

Then he promptly gave the pond a stink-eye.

"You don't look very happy though," Sugawara pointed out as he walked over, hands in his pockets as his smile grew a tinge wry and teasing.

"Yeah," Daichi looked at the water with a small slump. "I don't know why, but all those fish that apparently bite like crazy don't like me."

Sugawara laughed, before picking up Daichi's fishing rod and settled next to a red post. The wood was warm from the sun, and Sugawara flicked the rod out, the lure dropping into the water with a soft _plop_.

Before Daichi had even properly sat down, Sugawara felt a tug on his line. After reeling in for a few seconds, he flicked a fish up into his hand. Daichi's only reaction was only a startled twitch before a familiar a sharp grin followed. "Awesome as always, Suga!"

And there was that gleam that had made Sugawara admire him in the first place. Daichi leaned forward, his determined smile never fading as he insisted, just like always…

"Teach me."

Daichi's blazing determination in life was probably what made him both likeably popular and lack close friends, Sugawara reflected as he handed the pole back to Daichi and started giving him pointers.

Daichi had a fish in five tries, and Sugawara clapped him on the back in congratulations before getting to the point.

"Hey, Daichi, what's your favourite fairy tale of the Children's Festival?"

"Oh man, you're asking me?" Daichi asked back, scratching the back of his neck. "No-one really likes the ones I like…"

"Go on," Sugawara urged, swinging his legs. "I won't judge."

"Alright. I like the one about the boat. Or maybe the one about the horse?" Daichi put his hand on his chin, wondering. At Sugawara's puzzled look, Daichi didn't ask (he knew why) and just told him the stories.

One featured a man who built a boat in preparation for the seasonal flood, but encountered a drought instead. In this drought, a priest who desperately needed some untreated wood for a ceremony his church was funding, and offered to buy any wood on offer at an exorbitant price. Having used all the wood he had on the boat, the man could only watch the priest walk away with heavy regrets in his heart, with a sturdy boat and a continuation of his struggle.

The second story featured a man whose son found a horse. A horse, being extremely valuable to any poor villager, made the whole household celebrate. During this celebration, the son was showing off the horse before something startled the horse, and the son fell and broke his leg. The villager then cursed the horse, as his only son now couldn't help him with harvesting. The next morning, a soldier carrying an imperial decree ordered all able bodied men to conscript for a brewing war with the neighbouring country. The villager, realising his son was safe, reversed all his curses and thanked his ancestors again with all his might.

After hearing the two, Sugawara blinked in surprise before deadpanning, "Yeah, I understand why no one likes those." Daichi laughed, a boisterous one that echoed over the elegant lily ponds a little too wildly.

"Right?" He huffed through a chuckle. "The story of Tarou, or the Flight of the Moon Princess, or the Bamboo Child are all very popular. Much more popular than the one about the Boat in the Drought, and the Fortune Horse."

"But why do you like them?"

"They have different morals of course," Daichi shrugged, "but they all deal with perspective. I think it's cool."

Sugawara hummed as he watched a stray koi, much fatter than a fish should generally be, before breaking Daichi's concentration with a few well-placed elbow nudges.

"You mentioned the other stories. Teach me," he (maybe not as playfully as he intended) demanded.

"So pushy, Suga," Daichi waggled his eyebrows at his friend before shrugging. "Sure. I'll start with the Flight of the Moon Princess. A lot of girls like that one. Well, a long time ago in the Celestial realm…"

Daichi talked until he ran out of bait, until they arrived at Asahi's rooms in the palace to wait for their friend to finish his dressing preparations for the festival's more formal palace echelon feast, bumping shoulders along the way. When Daichi politely stopped in front of the door, and Sugawara (who didn't need to care) just flung it open anyway, Asahi's blinding smile at being rescued from the maids and tailors and butlers made him bust out laughing.

That night, when Daichi was busy guarding Asahi during all the palace politics, Inuoka somehow found the time to drag him out of Nekomata's cottage and plonked him next to his mother, sitting on his other side just in time to see the late night fireworks show.

* * *

The next morning, Kageyama showed he was more than a strange [suspicious] child – he showed him a _witch's tablet._ It was impossible. The witches lived on the fringes of the Great Void, vastly east of here, a little to the north bordering the wastelands of that had once been Jin. How could a tablet so well made come to a nobody town? A town that, Sugawara noted, wasn't even recorded in the map he'd bought?

Barring that, something like a _recording_ was something most rural villagers couldn't even _comprehend_.

But.

Even when faced with a veneer of friendliness, Kageyama stumbled over his words in, Sugawara sensed, in an sincerely awkward way to both make him at ease and befriend him. The sincerity (a great, looming expression of intense ferocity at the most mundane things) in which he tried his best in whatever he went about to do was more than a little funny. It was obvious from his shape and muscles he'd never had any combat training at all. The utter ignorance about magic and how to use it was genuine; not a surprise when regarding the small, poverty-stricken villages around the area. He was just a small, awkward, well-meaning kid.

But.

Kageyama spoke like no child he'd ever known.

He knew things about the usages of _electricity_ like the great metropolises of the south, was prone to using formal phrases and language that would have seemed perfectly fine in an educated middle-class family in Chou. When they talked, Kageyama often mentioned even stranger, unknowing things that even Sugawara, who had access to Nekomata's slew of knowledge and research journals, hadn't mentioned or just touched on.

But.

Kageyama couldn't read. Kageyama couldn't write the common language. Kageyama didn't even know elementary, day to day things like the lowest, easiest spell _fos_ that all children in Chou learn with gleeful joy when they're twelve, magically inclined or not.

He also liked staring at Sugawara in the most blatant of ways. Kind of awe-struck. Half disbelieving. One hundred percent earnest.

If he was a spy wanting to blend in, Sugawara watched silently, drawing the hood of his cloak down as a traveller neared them on the small road Kageyama was leading him, he was very, very bad at it.

* * *

"Sugawara," Kageyama started, fidgeting and awkward, "are you, um, tired yet?"

A quick glance showed that Kageyama's feet had blisters where the sandals had rubbed his feet too much, and the slight trembling of over-used muscles. On the other hand, Sugawara hadn't even drawn on any _qi_ for energy yet. He hadn't even broken _sweat_.

"Of course I am," Sugawara smiled. "Let's take a break! I have some food that can be heated up for lunch."

Gathering kindling and clearing a patch of dirt roughly was enough preparation for a meal. Actually, he could just warm the food by himself. Heating a spoon and stirring it wasn't that hard to do.

But for the sake of experimenting, Sugawara started prepping for a small fire.

Despite Kageyama not knowing anything about magic, and Sugawara himself being more or less ignorant about the less general uses of _spitha_ since he didn't do external magic at all, Sugawara was remarkably perceptive.

Every time he used _fos_ , the sparks would drift away from Kageyama, as if pushed.

If he had been anybody else, he would've just probably ignored it.

" _Fos_ ," Sugawara muttered, and a small stream of sparks flew towards the kindling. As usual, Kageyama gravitated towards him, watching with wide eyes. And as usual, the sparks changed course, drifting right when Kageyama watched from the left. The little crackles of fire drifting right… even against the slight breeze they had.

He glanced at Kageyama, who tilted his head enquiringly in reply.

"What?" Kageyama asked, taciturn in a way that Sugawara was quickly realising was just his inherent character.

"Ah, nothing," Sugawara grinned. "Just deciding what to eat."

"What food do you have?" Kageyama's eyes gleamed.

"I have some sausage links, some cheese, and some pickled plums? Also, rice…"

* * *

That night, Sugawara built his tent and was about to invite Kageyama in when he saw the boy had already laid out his pallet on the ground and was lying near the campfire, looking as lost as usual he scanned the sky and its stars. So Sugawara zipped up his tent instead and waited for the kid to sleep.

Sugawara had always been able to see magic, but Nekomata had taught him how to see colours and blessings within them. Usually elemental blessings had one colour in respect to element, while Divine Blessings shone various colours that represented their deities, richer and more powerful.

Nekomata had let him compare once, the blinding verdant green that was Nekomata's divine sage-y powers and something more… normal. That evening, Nekomata pointed at Inuoka at the start of a night market, giving a small grin Sugawara as he did so.

"Look at him, Koushi. I gave him a small earth blessing, back when he was young. Check it out."

Sugawara back then had still been a primarily silent student, and just did what he was told. The blessing Nekomata held in his soul was so strong, the magic it produced still made him squint.

After the green of Nekomata's magic, Inuoka's soul was only just a curl of green wisp around the normal pearl-white of a person's soul-qi.

"It's so… dim," Sugawara murmured in surprise, blinking again at Inuoka who was presently haggling over the price of a bag of apples. He glanced back at Nekomata just to make sure his vision was still working, getting blinded all over again. Nekomata had laughed gleefully when he cursed at the force of it.

Nekomata hadn't been a bad teacher. He'd showed him all sort of different blessings – water, metal, fire, wind, earth. Combinations of them, like wood, craft, ice. How blessing's manifested. The differences between blessings that were given (witches, high-ranked priests, certain prophets and minor deities), in comparison to blessings that people were born with (sages, royalty, saints, heroes, other such positions). Stuff like that.

So when Kageyama fell asleep and his soul was at its calmest state, Sugawara unzipped his tent flap and pulled all of his qi to his eyes to detect what blessing Kageyama had. If he was lying about the witches and the blessing they gave him, Sugawara could just pack all his things and leave anyway, no big loss.

Closing his eyes in preparation, it took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust, the qi settling in a pool within his eyes and the rest of his head – letting him see the qi emanating from all living things, lighting the veins within his eyelids in a red web that spiralled up and out of his vision.

Slowly, he brought his attention beyond his eyelids, past the tent into the wispy green of the clearing, where stopped breathing in shock.

Kageyama burned a blue sun that shone even through his eyelids, the clearing, and all the vague yellow wind _qi_ around. It was unlike the lush green of Nekomata, who always gave a sense of the wild forest, mysterious and filled with mischief. No, Kageyama shone the purest sapphire he'd ever seen, an azure ripple of surface-calm, belying dark indigo currents that roiled underneath in a never-ending spiral into darkness he couldn't see the depth of. Sugawara had to forcefully blink himself out of it, twisting to the side harshly before realising that he was on his knees, breathing hard just from looking. He let all the qi leave his eyes, wiping the sudden sweat on his forehead.

Nekomata had always laughingly said he was already controlling his power and presence, and Sugawara had always scoffed at him because who leaked all that power willingly? An idiot, that's who. The stuff Nekomata leaked in a second was more magic than a normal non-magical produced their whole life.

…Yeah, he wasn't doubting his words now.

Sugawara flopped outside for some cool air, staring into the stars.

A blessing, definitely Divine. A blessing for a prophet? For a future Priest?

 _Or a sage?_

Sugawara laughed, slightly unbelievingly. Sages were the rarest of the rare, barely one or two in a generation. Entire countries could trace back hundreds of generations and still not record a meeting with a sage. Telling himself that he'd meet two sages in his life was a joke practically not worth thinking of.

What else could it be though? True prophets were rare and powerful too, but prophets siphoned their power from their surroundings. A priest seemed even more unlikely, since they only got power when they prayed and lived their lives in devotion.

Sugawara's thoughts turned towards the sage's staff Nekomata had left for him.

 _[The staff I gave to you because I have a hunch you'll meet a person who will need it]._

It… it couldn't be?

A sage's staff was powerful enough even if someone couldn't truly use its power, they would still find it somewhat useful. Sugawara had thought he'd be giving it to some religious figure or something and not an actual, new _sage_.

If Nekomata knew this, couldn't he, like, warn him or something?

(Thinking of Nekomata though, of _course_ he wouldn't.)

If Kageyama did have access to the gods, then maybe his weird spurts of knowledge and general genius wasn't that unexpected. Water was associated with knowledge, and the blue definitely told Sugawara that Kageyama was affiliated with a water deity…

In any case, how come no-one had found him yet? Power attracts power, and if what Kageyama said was true, a witch couldn't give a sage's blessing. Sages were born, not given. Even Sugawara noticed something strange about Kageyama after a mere _day_ of being around him.

Witches did, however, have the power to seal blessings away. And in turn, they had the power to free their sealed blessings. A blessing as powerful as a sage's mark would need the Witch Queen, Kiyo, or her daughter, Kiyoko, to control.

How would Kageyama ever earn the favour of any of those figures, when he lived in such a small, forgotten village?

Whoever the witch in Kageyama's tablet was, they had lied that the blessing had come from the witches, probably, to protect him.

(but how? Why? The witches' forest was all the way at the Great Void, near the wastes of Jin. There couldn't have been any contact. Someone must have liked Kageyama enough to protect him like this, but it was _impossible.)_

Turning contemplative eyes on the small figure and carefully tucking the blanket more securely around him when he noticed the child had kicked it off, Sugawara looked down at the boy's face. All the tension and lines that made Kageyama look perpetually tense and focused had smoothed out, and he was actually even snoring slightly.

Turns out he couldn't leave Kageyama after all. Even without knowing one hundred percent if he was a sage or not and that Kageyama was probably not a spy himself… if the witches knew about him, who else knew? Who else could start using him? Wu was on his trail, and to search for him they would track Kageyama down.

Kageyama would be the best bonus prize they could ask for. No, he couldn't abandon Kageyama, not until he had at least found somewhere safe.

The night fell a little more as he thought, the dark creating a damp chill that made Sugawara rouse from his thoughts and get concerned for Kageyama who only had his blanket. Wet cold only led to sickness…

Then he noticed that Kageyama was completely dry. Just like how Nekomata never get dirty when he gardened.

Sugawara was alarmed to feel a twitch of amusement across his lips when Kageyama flailed out of his blanket and frowned angrily at someone in his dream. Muttering about some 'hinata' guy and a game?

Tucking him in again, Sugawara retired to his tent.

* * *

That night, he dreamt of Daichi.

They were raiding the castle kitchens together so that they could haul it all up to Asahi's rooms. They stole a lot of cheeses, a pot of leftover stew, a bag of bread rolls, and a bag of sugar before racing out into the gardens. There, Daichi gripped the bag of cheeses and bread rolls tightly before spinning his _qi_ and leaping up the walls of the palace, bouncing off window sills and toeholds in the mortar before reaching the third floor, rolling softly on landing before waving down at Sugawara with a laugh and a flash of white teeth.

Sugawara smiled back up before squinting down. He had to be more careful since he'd chosen the pot of stew, so he simply concentrated and bent his knees, jumping up onto the balcony in one go.

Daichi clapped his shoulder when he landed, nearly making him stumble.

"Amazing! When are you going to teach me that, Suga?" He rambled as Daichi opened the balcony door and walked straight into Asahi's suite of rooms. Sugawara playfully batted his arm back.

"When you can win me in an arm-wrestle, of course."

That quickly earned a grimace.

"Evil, that's what you are," Daichi rolled his eyes, and Asahi poked his head out of his bedroom.

"Evil? Are you talking about yourself?"

Sugawara carefully set the pot down, chuckling as Daichi rolled his sleeves up with a dangerously genial smile on his face.

"Ah? Want me to show you evil, _Asahi-sama?"_

"I didn't mean it!" Asahi quickly blurted out in a voice that would have been a squeak if his deep voice would have allowed. "Lets eat all of this already, I mean! I'm super hungry from all the lessons today."

Daichi stopped pretending as his face changed into one of slight concern, eyebrows furrowed.

"They're really pushing you. You okay?"

Asahi flopped onto a couch, staring at Sugawara's pot of stew with hungry eyes.

"Yeah, I don't even know _why_ they want me to memorise the last five-hundred years of our war against demons but the test is in a week and I don't think I have _anything_ in my brain."

"Ah, such a muscle-head," Daichi snorted, mouth full of cheese.

"Yeah, a muscle-head," Sugawara nodded, reaching into the bag of rolls and dipping it into stew.

Asahi looked affronted. " _M-muscle?_ I don't even _like_ fighting! You guys are the ones who're training nuts!"

Sad thing was, having a large, hulking, bearded teen tearily exclaiming these things was just plain unconvincing. Daichi sprayed cheese everywhere with his next snort, causing Sugawara to wrinkle his nose while Asahi brushed off chewed cheese off his embroidered pants with disgust.

The next moment, Sugawara woke up to a crisp clear morning, Kageyama's breathing soft outside his tent.

His eyes narrowed, thinking back.

Asahi, and his increasing stress. The large shadow of the arm that crashed down on Chou.

 _Demons?_

He carefully put the thought at the back of his mind as he pulled a large grin to his face, opening his tent flap. Kageyama still wasn't up yet, so he leapt up into a tree, and started meditating. Half an hour later, he smiled down.

"Hello, Kageyama! Good morning!"

* * *

"Sugawara," Kageyama started, randomly like always.

"Yes?" Sugawara asked back, pleasantly.

"Here," Kageyama muttered awkwardly, eyes to the side and ears on fire. In his hands clutched a blue bunch of some borage that Sugawara had nonchalantly muttered he needed when he did inventory last night. He hadn't thought Kageyama was listening.

"Oh, thank you, Kageyama! That's very kind," Sugawara said with genuine happiness, accepting the star-flowers. He'd needed it for a restock of a certain antidote. "Where did you find it? I'm surprised you know about herbs."

"Over there," Kageyama answered, short as always. It was as if he never really thought of expanding his thoughts, Sugawara thought with a tinge of amused exasperation.

"I hope it helps," Kageyama twitched awkwardly as he did something weird with his arms, an awkward half-wave-half-awkward shoulder jerk, before he stopped midway and instead gave Sugawara a sincere nod instead, ears burning and looking sideways.

Sugawara watched, considered. There were many problems that he couldn't solve ( _Asahi, demons)_ , but…

They'd moved so slowly that he could probably solve this one.

Let him rest his case against Kageyama. No matter enemy or not, the boy didn't deserve it.

He just needed more information.

* * *

That night, he sneaked out of his tent and made sure that Kageyama was asleep, before he jumped into the trees and made a beeline back the way they came. Their three day trip was reduced to four hours with his maximum speed (Kageyama really did walk quite slowly, and needed quite a few breaks) as Sugawara went back to Kageyama's dilapidated village.

"Kageyama Tobio?" An old man scratched his beard, with eye bags that dipped into his cheeks and stinking heavily of a person who hadn't bathed for at least two weeks. "Sounds familiar. Probably an orphan, ask the lady down the street. Pink hair, name's Hana," the man added helpfully.

He found the middle-aged woman sitting in front of an old building, picking her nails. "Kageyama Tobio disappeared a few days back," Hana regretfully murmured to him. "A kind boy, he is, even though he is a little strange. Never got along with the other orphans, insisted on living alone."

Hana twirled her pink hair around a finger, staring at Sugawara in curiosity. Behind her, Sugawara sensed only a few small living signatures within the orphanage.

"He never showed signs of magic or power?" Sugawara asked.

"Well, he was always weird, but I've never seen him shoot any fireballs or anything," the woman replied, obviously quite ignorant in the way that magic worked. "If you want more information, there was another woman who gave handouts to orphans weekly. Yoko doesn't mind questions, you'll find her in the town square around this time."

A relatively pretty young lady was folding up a cart in the square when he arrived.

"Kageyama?" She asked, pausing at his question. "Well, he has always been stand-offish, but it's normal among orphans." After his next question, she looked at him strangely. "Weird? Well, he has always been silent. Lives in his head, that boy. I heard him talking to himself when he was alone a few times, but… we all have our own traumas. I guess he misses his mother, poor boy. Why are you asking?"

Even if he'd disguised himself, it was never good to be under scrutiny. Sugawara politely disengaged himself, and located Kageyama's past house.

An empty, drafty square of dirt. A small wooden slab propped up by stones for a desk. A utilitarian storage area, relatively clean. A holey piece of cloth that had once been a shirt lay abandoned in the corner, used for wiping probably. The wooden walls were thin enough that even a non-reinforced punch could probably crumble parts of the wall. Nothing gave him answers to the conundrum that was… Kageyama.

When he visited the small field a villager had told him had been Kageyama's, he found etched characters on a nearby rock, clearly symbols that held a meaning of some kind. A script. Kageyama was _educated._

However, there was no school in the village he'd just passed. When he searched his memory of languages and scripts, the etchings on the rock only vaguely reminded him of some ancient, nearly dead script called hiragana, a language that only ancient history scholars used nowadays. How would Kageyama have known it?

Sugawara hummed in vague thought, fingertips tracing over the characters.

But nothing… indicating any contact with an enemy. Hiragana would be too easily cracked as a code.

 _(the witches though?)_

He raced back to their camp, even faster now that he'd warmed up, where Kageyama, once again had kicked off his blankets.

Adjusting the small blanket that Kageyama had, he finally noted the quality - small, and threadbare. He would have to buy a new one for Kageyama soon. Also some more supplies, because he'd noticed that Kageyama seemed to like dishes with a little more meat in them, and frankly his cheeks looked already, even with only a few days of good food. It wasn't like he lacked money…

Sugawara raked a hand over his hair, confused out of his mind. Why was he getting attached so _quickly_?

* * *

A few days later, he followed Kageyama into town to shop for some supplies for the both of them instead of avoiding civilisation like normal. He was eyeing a camping supplies store that had a few warm blankets on display when—

"This is nice fabric," and Sugawara startled at the hand that clutched a handful of his cloak. A pleasant face, generic, but sharp-eyed in a way that Sugawara instinctively knew to dislike. The man continued to drag the cloak down a little, making the hood shadowing his face start to slide back. " _Very_ nice. Not from around here, are you? Hmm, the east?" Sugawara discreetly pinched his cloak so that it stopped sliding backwards, knowing when the intruder had seen too much when he was able to make eye-contact.

The smile that the man made was triumphant even before his supposed 'offer'. "Want to trade for it, son?"

Alarm bells were flaring in Sugawara's mind, even as he tugged the hood back over his head, careful not to look alarmed for Kageyama's sake, who had turned around and was staring at them with an inquisitive tilt to his head.

"No thank you," He grinned, clapping Kageyama on the back to use it as an excuse to step before him. Kageyama seemed to notice that something was amiss and hefted their purchases up, even as Sugawara started dismissing the guy. "Me and my friend still have a ways to go, you see!"

He laughed, already stepping backwards as he joked. "Believe me, I could use some coin too."

Then he walked Kageyama around the corner, stuffed all the things Kageyama had in his arms into his bag and practically ran out of the backstreets of the village back into the forest.

"You say you got a blessing, right?" Sugawara asked, hands tight on Kageyama's shoulders. Sage or not, a divine blessing meant divine words. Kageyama met his eyes with confusion, "You can see words floating above heads? What did he have?"

He distantly noted that he didn't like how nervousness stretched Kageyama's features.

"Clever-eyed Profiteer. Why?" Kageyama replied.

Of course. An observant busy-body who would do (or say) anything for money.

His pursuers had probably already caught up to him.

Sugawara glanced at the road to the Capital, and made a split-second calculation. If he burned himself out, rushed at maximum speed without sleeping, he'd get to Duke Tsukishima's Frontier City in a week. The month to take the trip was an estimate made by Kageyama's speed anyway…

But he glanced down, saw Kageyama's small determined face staring up at him, and faltered.

Kageyama tilted his head in inquisitive worry, and Sugawara flattened his lips as he turned on his heel, marching quickly down the road.

* * *

That night, he made preparations. Sugawara swept the road and removed any traces that would lead to anyone tracking them to their campsite. Then he put all those traces back, leading to a fake clearing, carving some false ward carvings on trees around an illusionary tent to make it more legitimate.

Then he went back, to where Kageyama was lying wide awake on his small pallet. His blue eyes immediately shifted over to him when he strolled into the clearing, question clear on his face.

"If you want to speak, Kageyama, speak," Sugawara encouraged.

The other boy frowned in thought before finally settling with a slow, "Are you okay?"

"Maybe," Sugawara shrugged. "I hope I'm alright, at least! Good night, Kageyama."

Kageyama's face creased in dissatisfaction when he looked at Sugawara for the first time.

That night, Sugawara packed up his tent the moment Kageyama fell asleep, watching. In the early morning, Kageyama woke up probably expecting to make breakfast. Instead, Sugawara gave him a pack of trail mix, before pretending to do inventory, slipping his weapons back into their slots within his clothing – a small knife in each boot, various pockets in his belt for poisons. Only one pack of needles, since they were highly specialised and annoying to use sometimes, and a small metal blowpipe he put in a front pocket in front of his heart. Then he loaded the rest of the hidden spaces around his arms and legs with shuriken and kunai. He holstered his two tantō – one hanging from his hip, and one on his back. A cloak over it all, sleeves and hands free. Hood up.

During all of this, he felt Kageyama's stare on his back, waiting. Watching.

As always.

How was he going to protect Kageyama? He was well-known in Chou. Near-undefeated. A young genius. _The Sage's Apprentice._

They wouldn't have sent any less than the best.

Sugawara gritted his teeth, staring at all his supplies. Then a sudden flock of birds flew into the air with loud shrieks.

All the wards he set up around the fake campsite shattered. Even before the first curls of smoke rose into the air, Sugawara knew.

"They've come," he murmured.

Nekomata's staff was the most powerful thing in his arsenal. Most of the things that Nekomata lived around grew like crazy. _Qi_ was the life-force of the world, and everyone had a set capacity of throughout their life. A Sage of Nekomata's calibre wasn't just a container – he _produced_ the _qi_ of the world through divine connection – everywhere he went, plants grew like mad, soaking up Nekomata's magic to grow. This staff had been soaking Nekomata's magic for a few decades.

Even if incompatible, the staff should protect Kageyama.

"I still don't know if you're a spy or not, but if you are innocent, I'm sorry for dragging you into this due to my paranoia," Sugawara quietly apologised, before pulling out the staff and it's near sentient power to Kageyama. "This is a staff that was given to me by my mentor, who was also a sage, one blessed like you. If you're really who you way you are, the staff will protect you. If not, then you're more capable than you look, and I don't have to worry."

When Sugawara looked at Kageyama in the eyes, the pre-dawn made his already pale, little gaunt face look even more scared. Somehow, he managed to scrounge out a kind smile, pushing the staff into unresisting hands.

…A powerful _qi_ signature was streaking their way.

Sugawara quickly took out the letters that Nekomata had given him from his pack and slipped it into his pocket just as a black shadow flitted into the clearing.

Judging from the footwork, he was from Wu. The man smelled like smoke and fire.

"I found you, Sugawara. Hand it over."

Sugawara gave a _tsk_ inside even as his face twisted into the biggest, most friendly smile he had as he stepped slightly away from Kageyama to draw him out of this intruder's attention, bouncing a little to loosen his muscles and keep the attention. "Hmm, any chance of you telling me who sent you?"

"No." A smirk from under the cowl. "Your time's out."

The first strike, to Sugawara sudden _blinding_ anger, was at Kageyama. It was with a seeping coldness that Sugawara took a flash of a step back to catch the shuriken between his fingers.

"Wha—" Kageyama let out a startled gasp.

"Wow, your aim is really bad!" Sugawara replied, even letting a little bit of a chuckle to leak into his voice even as he made sure to not let Kageyama draw _any more attention_. The attacker's face had set into a grim line, and Sugawara felt a cold streak of satisfaction. Underestimated him, did he? "I was _waaay_ to the right, you know?"

The shuriken wasn't of bad quality, some part of Sugawara's mind noted even as snapped his wrist to send it straight back at the intruder's own jugular with a little burst of poisonous _qi_ behind it so that the attacker couldn't catch it again and make it a ridiculous round of hot potato.

He had to bring the fight away. With a leap, Sugawara raced east, heart leaping upon the gamble that the attacker from Wu would immediately follow him.

It wasn't even a few seconds later when he felt a huge explosion of _qi_ behind him that crashed out over him like a wave and realised his gamble had failed, and two, Kageyama really was a sage after all, and three, the attacker would now _know that_.

He had to kill this man.

Sugawara stopped at a clearing far enough, and planted a few poisonous mines and waited.

* * *

A charred leg for a slice to the assassin's shoulder, one lost arm for a poisoned stab to the stomach. A bruised rib for a flinch when the assassin threw a flashbang straight into his face. It hadn't been a surprise to Sugawara that a man sent to take him out could keep up with him, but he hadn't expected someone who had been prepared for _every single one_ of his tricks. Not just know his tricks, but know his trick's _weaknesses_.

(He hadn't let that much slip in Chou right? He hadn't gotten _that_ soft?)

It ended with Sugawara winded in the middle of the clearing, hand over his heart as if trying to catch his breath when in fact his hand had curled around Nekomata's letters. He could set them on fire before any attack that could take his life. His grey hair rested in clumps over his forehead as he glared up at the Wu assassin, who uncharacteristically paused before dealing the final blow.

"Sugawara Koushi," the assassin slowly sounds in his mouth. Tendrils of power come from his next words, trying to trickle into his mind. Truth spells, Sugawara thought with disgust. "Was the boy you were with one of your mission by the Sage?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Sugawara wheezed with an easy smile. "You don't seem to know any post-mortem interrogation techniques," Sugawara clicked his tongue, tone patronising as he shook his head in disappointment. "Wu's standards are slipping, I see."

Sugawara circulated his _qi_ faster, ready to spring away, even as the assassin's face twisted his own _qi_ to light up the runes in his knives ready for a death blow. Just as he was about to swing his arm, a small figure dived between their stand-off, a familiar staff swinging.

Sugawara stared at Kageyama in utter disbelief.

Was he an _idiot?_

Who, who would dive between two trained individuals in the middle of a battle—

"Back off. You're not welcome here, _Chaser Assassin_." The boy who had showed him his back without hesitation spoke in the coldest voice he'd ever heard from him. And wait, Wu had bothered to send the _chasers_ after him? Wow, he really was a VIP now.

"Sage," the chaser had backed off. "You're not involved in this. If you hired this boy to protect you, believe me that after this is done I will gladly escort you wherever you need to go."

Sugawara's eyebrow twitched at such a bald lie, before using all the _qi_ he had previously accumulated to haul himself onto his knees. "Don't believe him," he scoffed, "he'll just kidnap you."

Oh _ow_. His ribs hurt from just _breathing_.

"Are you okay?" Kageyama asked immediately, voice having lost all the coldness from before. This strange little boy with no martial training at all, who made a really pathetic defensive pose with his staff all in an effort to protect _Sugawara_.

All thoughts of running away halted, paused, and changed into ones where Sugawara tried to somehow tuck Kageyama under his good arm and flee a still armed and near full-functional assassin.

Just when Sugawara was (half) determined to go on a (half) kamikaze attack, the whole clearing was flooded with unimaginably pure _qi_ – so pure that he could see it even without any sort of enhancement. So pure he could feel it in the air as he breathed it in, heavy and clean.

It also froze their enemy in mid-air.

Woah.

"Leave," the tiny underfed idiot midget solemnly stated in front of him, still carefully placing himself in between Sugawara and the assassin who'd retreated to the trees by then. In the meantime, Kageyama shook the staff experimentally, before asking Sugawara with no beguile at all, "Is this blue thing magic?"

 _He couldn't be serious._

"Yes, it is," Sugawara replied anyway. Then he marvelled at all this _qi_ everywhere, examining the surprisingly normal boy that made it happen, with his worn sandals, old button shirt and trembling hands. _Trembling._

Oh. Of course. "But Kageyama, we both know you can't hold this for long." Sugawara paused. "You can leave me behind if you want." By himself, if he pulled out all the stops, he could probably incapacitate the assassin…

To his exasperation, Kageyama turned his heel and ignored his perfectly valid suggestion. Then with a scrunch of his brow, and a tightening grip on his staff, all the blue _qi_ was somehow… gripped. Swung, until it was one solid blue line that led to where the assassin was still waiting, outside of their bubble of azure _qi_. The next second, Kageyama yelled…

" _Fos!"_

Sugawara clapped a hand to his forehead.

"What, you're threatening me with that useless campfire spell?" The assassin spluttered, because even _assassins_ have pride, thank you very much. Sugawara understood completely. If someone tried to attack him with _fos_ he would totally get annoyed too. At most, _fos_ could light a cigarette, let alone be any sort of attack spell…

The next second, there was a roar of a large bonfire at night, of a huge devouring forest fire as the largest fireball Sugawara had ever seen shot out from the tip of Kageyama's staff to _eat_ all the blue _qi_ , a crackling blue-white monstrosity that shot straight towards the assassin and past him, ploughing through dozens of thick, decades old trees and far into the distance.

The assassin would have lost more than an arm from that, and when Kageyama seemed to summon another wave of his _qi_ , he wised up and streaked away.

As Sugawara was readjusting his reality, Kageyama whirled around and in the most horrified voice he yelled, "I'm sorry!"

Huh?

"I didn't mean to! Really!"

Didn't mean to... nearly burn down the forest? After all that, he cared about Sugawara's opinion on his destruction of the _environment?_ Sugawara wanted to burst out laughing, only to choke on a broken rib cos _ow_ that was a thing.

"It's um," Sugawara struggled through the pain, "it's okay, Kageyama. We should probably get away from here though, just in case?" He continued in bemusement at the lost fluttering that Kageyama was doing around Sugawara's wounds.

"Are you okay?" The kid asked, all _worried_ and Sugawara couldn't even try to stop the bubble of amusement and affection that popped somewhere in his sternum and made his face twitch into a smile.

Kageyama helped him hobble back to their camp, obviously straining underneath his weight. He was all bones and solemn glares really, just a stick of unwavering determination. And not once even _trying_ to grab Nekomata's staff back when Sugawara needed it as a walking stick.

Something in Sugawara's chest eased.

* * *

His burn salve was as effective as always, and when he explained the life-debt thing to Kageyama, he was expecting something normal. As the Sage's apprentice (not that, you know, he ever _told_ Kageyama he was Nekomata's apprentice as such, but it was plenty obvious that he came from somewhere well-off and powerful by now) he could basically promise anything in the world.

Kageyama asked for a ' _thank you'_.

 _Really._ What a strange little guy.

It wasn't hateful though. When Sugawara insisted, Kageyama finally gave him something that he could give.

Be his friend. No loyalties, no threats upon his life. Just 'to be a friend' and do 'friend-things'.

Kageyama obviously didn't know the weight of that statement. Friends were an interesting subject to Sugawara – something he didn't know much of, really, except that Daichi and Asahi did the friend-thing much better than he. But he did know one thing. Friends stuck up for one another – they were someone to _trust_.

Kageyama, as much as he was rough-kneed and nervous blue eyes now, was the sage of the future. Countries would be fighting over him until he grew powerful. Get sucked into the petty squabbles of politics, chewed and torn and near digested before being spat out into the most convenient conflict when he became inconvenient. Something unbeatable, with a quest like 'eradicate the demons!' or something. He would be one of the guides of the world, whether or not he wanted to be.

And here he was, asking Sugawara to have his back throughout it all.

Sugawara stifled a chuckle, warm.

"Kageyama, okay. I'll be your friend."

* * *

 _Sugawara loves spicy things, but he also_ really _likes eating spicy things with people who can't handle spicy. As in, Asahi. (Their faces are just hilarious, okay?). Only he does it underneath a veneer of niceness, of course. Like, 'ah, here's some cold water!' but secretly he knows cold water only makes it worse…_

 _Sugawara doesn't actually hide his evil-ness as well as he thinks he does. On a secret poll about the Karasuno alumni, he was actually ranked third in 'THE SCARIEST TO ANGER' list. When he heard it, Sugawara just snickered. Then he asked (rather friendlily) who voted on that poll.  
(no-one dared to answer)_

 _Despite all of that, nearly everyone that Sugawara meets just instinctively likes him. He gets on rather swimmingly with Iwaizumi, who is constantly frustrated at how Oikawa_ doesn't _like Sugawara on one reason – that is, Sugawara just has more natural 'refreshing-ness' than him. Iwaizumi, too used to all this pettiness, ignores all of Oikawa's whining and hangs out with Sugawara anyway. They surprisingly like to karaoke a lot._


	5. The Case of Hinata Shouyou

"Kojiiiii," Hinata complained, linking his hands behind his head as he stared beyond the forest canopy. In the distance, the bright rays of the morning sun shone an inviting shade of white-blue that made him want to laugh, made his feet itch to run and run and _run._ "You're taking _foreveeer_. Are you done yet?" He side-eyed his friend, just feeling _bored bored bored_. Life was boring, his village was boring, and his long awaited break (he'd rushed his chores and skinned a knee of the floor for his efforts, you know?) was boring too, because Koji couldn't even finish the one task that his teacher had given him yesterday!

Koji, however, didn't look affected by Hinata's whining though. In fact, it looked like he'd managed to just ignore Hinata by sheer habit, continuing to squint at the tree as he muttered weird incantations under his breath.

Hinata resisted a pout, scrunched his nose up, and tried to be the bigger man. His ma was always on about that. Being the bigger person and stuff.

Not that, you know, it was easy when certain people were _ignoring him_ but trying was always worth something, right?

Koji was sun-dappled and partially burnt from the sun, because he'd been sitting in the same spot for too long. Even as Hinata watched, Koji continued his stupid stare-down with the tree he was trying to talk to. As a trainee-monk, he could hear the voices of trees. And, and that sounded great and all, but Hinata had heard Koji complain about what trees gossip about too much to want hear plant voices. Apparently all they talk about was how pretty their leaves were or boast about who had more sunshine?

And Koji's teacher was the local drunk of the village anyway, so Hinata understood, _really he did okay_ , it's just that Koji and Yukitaka had promised to go with him to their tree, and… they were all stuck here because Koji couldn't do his job right!

Bleh. Hinata made a face. Life was unfair.

"Koji, what's your task anyway?" Hinata asked, swinging his legs and tracing the weathered bark of the tree he was sitting on. It was a nice tree. Hinata patted it.

"My teacher is a dumbass who wants a complete list of all the bugs that lives in this tree in front of me," Koji managed to grunt out. "I didn't think it'd take this long. The tree is being really annoying."

Yukitaka, who'd mainly been silent because a shaman was never idle (ritualistic magic was hard, okay?) and had been counting the strands of monkey butt fur for tomorrow, glanced up with slight amusement at Hinata, his grin growing slightly wry when his Hinata-radar pinged for intervention.

"Maybe you can let us all hear, so that Hinata can understand what you're going through?" Yukitaka grinned, carefully putting the monkey fur back into the pocket of his bag, drawing out a handful of scarab beetle shells to sort instead. Blue had to go with yellow, he absently noted. "You know Hinata's deaf to that kind of stuff."

Koji sighed, before drawing sigil (the one with the fancy curves that looked like a bird's wing) onto the tree, before gesturing impatiently for Hinata's hand. And suddenly Hinata could hear a girl's voice that he heard in his _brain_ instead of like, through his ears.

Man, that never stopped being creepy. Having Yukitaka in his head sometimes was weird enough, but thinking that trees sometimes had voices too…

Well, that was a monk's job, wasn't it? Making sure trees had their rights and all. Hinata was just glad he didn't born with the talent, because he didn't have the head for it, to be honest.

" _Koji, Koji, Koji, Koji,"_ the tree sang in a light airy laugh, and a little girl's voice danced around his head. The tree Koji was sitting in front of was relatively new, after all. Just thirty years old. " _Koji, Koji, Koji is stuuupid, he can't answeeer a single riddle can heeee? If you don't, I won't tell you your fifty-fifth bug you knooow?"_

Wow. Hinata blinked, rocking back on the limb a little. That tree sounded like all the girls Natsu, the most adorable little sister a brother could have ever, hated. Natsu had the shortest temper sometimes, it was hilarious, and the last time Natsu had a birthday party they'd invited Mina just for kicks, and Natsu had been huffy for weeks.

"SHUT UP, WOMAN! JUST LET ME THINK!" Koji yelled, blocking his ears with his hands. Since Koji had only drawn the sigil on the girl's tree, Hinata could only hear her voice. But Koji heard _all_ the trees at _all_ times and…

"Huh, Koji," Hinata asked randomly. "How do you sleep with all those voices talking all the time?"

"You tune them out," Koji said with a very pointed glare in his direction, before giving Hinata the shoulder and _okay_ , passive-aggressive much? The little girl was still whining and playing and… okay. Hinata would be _supportive_. With a sigh, he flomped back onto his tree.

Kouji was a muscle-head who couldn't do anything with inner _qi_ anyway, he huffed. Hinata's _qi_ boosts were so much more awesome!

" _I'll give you a hint. It starts b and is two words and ends with d and it's what you are to meeee!"_

Hinata watched in fascination as Koji reluctantly answered. "Best friend?" His ears burning as his annoyance died.

" _Yeah! Dumby Koji answered!"_ The tree laughed in their heads as her leaves shivered and rained a few leaves and a beetle onto his hand. _"That's another one. It's blue and shiny and humans have a weird name for it that starts with… T!"_

Another riddle?

"Ugh, when can we go, Kojiiiiiiii," Hinata rolled himself off the branch and onto another one with some incredibly awkward acrobatics, trying to avoid the mass of branches in front of Koji because they were poised as they usually were – trees liked to reach out and touch Koji, and Hinata couldn't help but think it intensely creepy sometimes. "Just bludge your assignment or something, you teacher doesn't care! Old Genta's probably drinking!"

"I care," Koji replied shortly, rolling his shoulders with a grimace. "Just because he doesn't want to teach me doesn't mean I don't wanna learn, okay? Not everyone has exercises that just involve jumping around." Then he eyed the tree and her blatant, childish expectation and sighed. "Sorry Hinata," Koji admitted, scratching his hair. "Negotiating is taking a lot more time than I thought it would. You should go to our tree first? I'm not great at talking, you know that. This will take a while."

At Koji's apologetic grimace, Hinata paused before laughing, scratching the back of his head.

"Right, I sometimes forget that you're such a _musclehead_ ," Hinata teased (and ignoring Koji's offended squawk at being called a musclehead by _their resident village musclehead_ ), and glanced up at the sky. The day was… surprisingly pleasant! That makes it more fun! Grinning, Hinata sprang up to stand on his branch again. He couldn't help it, he had the _jitters_ , okay, and started bouncing on his heels and slowly let his disappointment go with every bounce. Then he stared longingly at the sky. "Yukitaka, let's go?"

Yukitaka, always glad to have a lazy afternoon lolling about in a shady patch of grass, gave Hinata an apologetic smile (since today _was_ an especially nice day, wasn't it?).

"Sorry, Hinata! Next time?"

Hinata pursed his lips as his looks turned pleading. He even widened his eyes for maximum effect, because it seemed to work on all those aunties in the kitchens. Particularly effective when he dragged Natsu with him! All the better for midnight snack hoarding, hehe.

"But, but, but Yukitaka, you _promised_ we'd go to the tree this afternoon!"

When Yukitaka shrugged lazily against the grass, Hinata sighed, before glancing at the sky and realising he should start moving now, or he'd get _nowhere_ at this rate, and stuck his tongue out at Koji, giving him a parting shot. " _It's all your fault that I have to rush now!"_ And leapt to another tree to prepare his own brand of magic. Nothing as fancy as communing with trees or evoking the spirits of the dead, of course, but still amazing and all _his._

It always took a few seconds for him to activate any deeper layers of magic. Physical magic was all about awareness, surprisingly enough, so any novice like Hinata had to focus a little before things could happen much. So Hinata stood there, orange hair still, eyes closed, breathing deep. His magic was always coiled around his heart and backbone when he wasn't using it, and when he tugged on it to shift it around his veins, his skin started to glow a slight orange. A breath in. Tugged a strand of orange light into fingers and out. To his toes. To the tips of his hair.

He cracked his knuckles.

Using that as momentum to push the magic around his body, Hinata's hearing sharpened to the point he could hear the brush of air inside Koji's mouth as he breathed in, the hum of his vocal chords that hadn't been manipulated into words yet, and the faint sloshing of beetle juice in Yukitaka's bag. His muscles tightened until the jitters of energy smoothed into a thrum that became near unbearable. The next time he blinked, he spotted an eagle's nest up the volcano's crag a mile away, the individual flecks of dead bark and twigs clear in stark detail. His toes curled on the branch of the tree.

His magic reflected him, his intentions, and right now he wanted to _move_.

With a goodbye yell at his friends (Yukitaka happily preparing to nap while Koji pleaded the tree for a hint), Hinata took a leap forward onto a stronger tree branch, jumping up from there. Leaves streaked past him, thin branches avoided, as he ran up the trunk and sank straight into the sky. In the moments before he fell again, he regarded the whole of the forest he lived in beautiful detail, each tree and leaf clear to him stretched for miles upon miles, before distantly, the glitter of the sea.

Then he fell back into the shadows of the trees, landing on a bough as he leaped forward, gleeful as the air cut clean around him. He worked towards the lower, stronger boughs, as his feet led him deep into the forest to their tree, the one that the three of them had found when they'd gotten lost once, and promptly decided as their hideout.

When he was eight, it took him fifteen minutes, Koji thirty-two, and Yukitaka forty-four minutes to get to the hideout. Now, Koji improved a little to twenty-eight, Yukitaka was still at forty(ish) if he really pushed himself (his magic wasn't inclined to the physical at all), and Hinata could get there in three minutes even while lugging Yukitaka over his shoulder.

Now it took him two, alone, and he wasn't even _rushing_ or anything.

He loved the world in speed – a blur that flashed by in a crisp detail that only the strain of his magic could catch. Using last minute's adrenaline to swing around _this_ branch, to push his feet vertically onto a trunk and run, knowing gravity wouldn't catch him until he let it—it felt like the world was _limitless_ , like something was beyond his small village if he just let himself continue to fly, faster and faster, across the sea, to somewhere unknown and exciting.

When he got close to their tree hideout though, he let his speed bleed off, letting the magic fizzle out into a tree and felt it sigh a _thank you_ in its shiver of leaves as Hinata did his last big leap and stopped right at the crest, head sticking out of the canopy for one last peak

Hinata started dropping towards the ground, and on his way watched some grubs through a gap in the trunk as he walked down a particularly thick bough, the path ingrained in him after four years of repetition. Dappled sunlight, weak from winter, stretched its yellow limbs towards him and Hinata reached out, trying to grasp it back with a small laugh.

The tree was only half a minute away when a buzz, a pain that started near his left ear and exited in a streak of pain towards the right made Hinata wince before blinking in confusion.

Huh? Did he strain his magic too much?

Hinata flexed the whirl of magic around his heart with a small poke to his chest. Nup.

Weirdest headache ever.

He was still trying to figure it out, brows furrowed in confusion as he jumped down from the tree and sank his bare feet into the forest mulch, dank shade making him suddenly cold as he headed towards the small lake of water, and the tree that grew out of its seemingly fathomless depths.

The water was as clear as usual today, and Hinata didn't hesitate to jump in, opening his eyes to stare into the depths that bled slowly from white-clear water shadows to a midnight black that was impenetrable. Once, Yukitaka had dared Koji and Hinata to swim to the bottom of the lake, but even Hinata, at maximum boost, with his magic extending his lung capacity to _fifteen minutes,_ couldn't reach the bottom of the roots.

But he liked diving in it anyway.

The water coursed over his head as he swam towards the tree, blinked a few times to get used to the small glimmers of light that the water allowed through. The great tree that grew from the fathomless lake had roots that just curled up from the depths, down, and down, and _down_. Within a few strong kicks, he reached the edge of the tree, and underwater, the great twines of roots were slippery with green algae and only grew thicker and thicker in the depths that grew too harsh for even Hinata to bear.

This tree, more than anything in his life, felt like _magic_ , something great and exciting and unknown! No-one in the village knew anything about the bottomless lake when they asked but just seeing it (and maybe exploring whenever he had the chance with Yukitaka and Koji) was the most exciting thing in the world.

But exploring deeper would need to be left for another time – Yukitaka was the only one who could manifest light without oxygen and fuel, and Hinata mentally stuck his tongue out at Koji again, who'd made them miss out on _another_ adventure just because he couldn't answer _riddles!_

So instead of exploring alone, Hinata hauled himself out of the water and onto a thick root, quickly wringing out his clothes before shading his eyes as he glanced upwards. The tree trunk was thick and whorled, but the sheer size of it made it seem like a curved, fat, cylindrical cliff, and their hideout was a carved out hole half way up the tree just… there!

Hinata cracked his knuckles, letting the orange warmth of his magic seep into his legs before eagerly leaping upwards, reaching their cozy nook in a leap, and a quick catch of the fingers.

They'd sneaked cushions in there, and even a few old blankets that they'd washed and tried their hardest to mend (which made them extremely ugly and warped, but still so comfortable!) and it was the _best_ place to take an afternoon nap when there wasn't anything else to do for the rest of the day. They'd carved a small cabinet at the back of their tree-cave, and at the bottom, Yukitaka had rigged a small cloth bag with rope that dipped into the water whenever they wanted to store cool drinks.

Hinata always felt a frission of pride whenever he saw their hideout, a little birdbeat of mischievous glee that they'd sneaked a little of themselves into such a magical, adventurous place. Like they were _part_ of that adventure, away from the village and its homework, training, and chores.

Hinata climbed in eagerly, already reaching for one of the towels they'd stacked at the edge of their hideout to dry his hair when a dry voice broke the calm.

"Hinata," the voice said, extremely dry. "I knew you be here soon."

Hinata blinked comically, before he promptly squawked and fell backwards out of the hollow to plummet towards the water. The old lady listened with a serene face as she heard the familiar sounds of Hinata's alarmed squawking – after all, she taught the boy.

She may, or may not, have built her house on the highest tree that she could find around the village. And what better way to train physical magic than to make them realise their physical limits by kicking them out of her house when they annoyed her… repeatedly?

She was also probably where he got his tree-carving skills from. Her eyes glanced around the little cave. It was good enough for a twelve year old, she supposed.

"Granny Kobume!" Hinata shouted with surprise as he bounded straight back up the tree, none the worse for wear. "H-H-How did you get in here? Why do you like scaring me so much? Are you here to scold me? Did I do anything wrong? Oh no, you found out about the bucket thing, didn't you?"

Babbling, Hinata hauled himself inside and plopped himself onto a cushion as he closed his eyes in anticipation of retribution for the bucket thing. It wasn't even his fault, to be honest. He just kind of, you know, tripped with a handful of food, and maybe some of it landed in the bucket of ritual water, and maaaaybe he just picked it up and ran away…

"Boy," Kobume merely rolled her eyes. "You twelve. Even if I scare you, you will not get heart attack, so it is fine. If you say I give you scares one more time, I push you off this tree, yes?"

Hinata clapped his hand over his mouth so that he didn't accidentally babble anything more about the _bucket thing_ because it seemed like Kobume hadn't found out yet.

"This is good hollow," Kobume continued, whacking her glittery purple cane onto the cave's walls. "Made inside special tree. I would want to talk about this tree more, but more big matters to talk about. Hinata!"

At that last bark, Hinata immediately straightened and sat up as straight as he could.

"YES?" He squeaked in nervousness.

"Why you shout? I old, not deaf," Kobume complained, and Hinata squeezed his eyes shut as he barked another big 'YES!' Kobume rolled her eyes, continuing. Her role as an village elder was full off hardships, but training Hinata had barely been one. She was actually fond of the boy, sadly enough.

"This time is serious, so listen up. When you born, I presided over your ceremony because I trained in soothsayer arts, though I am not a soothsayer. You know this."

"Uh-huh?" Hinata nodded, who had already started to rock on his cushion because he couldn't stay still for his life. "Yeah, didn't you give up halfway because becoming a soothsayer was too hard?"

"Shut up! I am your teacher, so respect me!"

"YESSS!"

Kobume nodded her wrinkly face in satisfaction at Hinata's compliance before she rose up. "Come. I explain why I invade your silly pubescent hidey hole."

" _Granny_ ," Hinata groaned, trotting after her as she power-jumped twenty metres up to land on a ridge of tree bark, before jumping around the huge curve of the tree (he quickly flared his Boost and did the same), "that makes my cave sound stupid! Me and Yukitaka and Koji worked really hard on it you know?" He duly followed though, as Kobume continued jumping up, going around in zigzags that left the canopy of the forest long ago, and continued up to the very tip of the tree, before diving… in?

"Woah," Hinata's eyes widened in awe as he followed the hunched back of his teacher, as a large ledge of bark at the top of the tree tipped into a large cave and _never stopped_ , leading to a cave he'd never ever noticed. His insides tingled with excitement, as he started bouncing at the thought of _adventure._

Inside was another pseudo-doorway, where inside _that_ small cave was another corridor that was pitch black, as Hinata squeezed himself in and blocked the rays of light. His head nearly touched the ceiling of the strands of wood fibres that hung down from the ceiling like spider webs.

Kobume, who had been silent the whole time ignoring Hinata's _oohs_ and _aahs,_ raised an old wrinkly hand, making her palm glow blue.

"Come, doof child. There is truth you need to see and…" she trailed off, wrinkly face conflicted before snapping back into sternness. "And there are things that you need to see that I have hid from you."

Hinata blinked eyes that were still wide from inspecting this secret-secret cave that he'd never known about (since if he'd known, he would never have bothered digging out that cave hideout. He would've just lugged Yukitaka and Koji here, he wasted so much _time_ that could've been for exploring!).

"Huh? Granny, what do you mean hide?"

Kobume only lead him through the corridor, and as the little light that had squeezed through the small opening faded, Hinata started getting the creeps.

N-not that he was _scared_ or anything, duh!

…but maybe it was a little, um, creepy.

Maybe.

While he was trying to find anything to distract himself with (Granny would _mock him for the rest of his life_ if he even tried to grab the back of her shirt for support), he realised the bark beneath his feet suddenly cooled, before becoming noticeably moist and wet.

In two steps, water was up to his ankles.

Kobume abruptly stopped in front of him.

"Boy, now dive," she ordered. "This pool is very magical—"

Hinata's eyes could not boggle anymore. If they did, his eyeballs would probably fall out of his eyesockets. Even his fear got washed away when he heard the words 'very magical'. Was this... _adventure he smelt?_

"No worries, granny!" Hinata said with an enthusiastic grin, stripping his shoes and most of his clothing off, "leave diving into cool magical pools to me!"

And with a flare of his Boost, he was gone.

Kobume just stared at the little trail of bubbles Hinata left and snorted.

"Idiot. Did not even let me warn about ferocious water dragon."

* * *

Okay, so this might not be what Hinata was expecting when he took a dive in a mysterious pool of water in the middle of a magical tree that his granny-teacher lead him to.

Nah, he would totally believe granny would do something like this.

" _PFBBBTHSH!"_ Hinata screamed into the water, white bubbles exploding in front of his face as he immediately started kicking upwards, his magic going slightly haywire as he strained his muscles to haul himself out of the tree and hopefully away from that hugeass gigantic creature that he'd, maybe, kinda, okay he totally did, kick the eyeball of.

Accidentally! He didn't really notice it was an eyeball!

When he felt something cold winding around his ankle, he started yelling panicked apologies to whatever monster, creature or deity he just kicked. Unfortunately though, since he was underwater, it all sounded like a drowning cat hacking out furballs.

" _I'M SORRY!"_ His mind screamed in a last ditch effort as the thing around his ankle dragged him lower, and lower, and lower…

His lungs screamed for air.

This was worse than that time Yukitaka disappeared on that horror-hunt thing the adults set-up last year! He thought _that_ was fear!

' _Be still, little squirmy orange one,"_ a voice blasted into his mind.

Even while he was screaming and struggling, and maybe slowly dying from oxygen, a little part of Hinata's brain protested at being called little. Even short people can do amazing things!

' _I know, you small human, be still'_ the voice swelled again his mind, even as a bubble of air popped around him. Hinata blinked in surprise.

So, so, so it wasn't going to kill him? Or eat him or anything?

' _I am not a creature of metal, human. I am of water, and I only need water. The contaminated water in your veins is useless to me,'_ it replied to his thoughts, and man, mind-reading was actually kind of creepy when it wasn't Yukitaka doing it, huh…

After a few deep breaths, his mind settled enough for him to realise wait, he hadn't actually seen whatever the thing he was talking to was yet, so he swivelled his head even as the thing around his ankle let go. Twisting around, he was greeted by a huge snout, the thing around his ankle apparently the thing's tongue. He was about the size of the creature's pupil, maybe, a creature of river-currents and water magic, the swirl of its eyes a funnel like a whirlpool.

Hinata tried not to gawk. He truly did. Natsu had hit him too many times for gawking at merchant wares, because they then thought Hinata had money to _buy_ it which was... hahaha. No. Anyway, it got merchants all disgruntled, and Natsu annoyed because that meant she couldn't use her cute kid eyes to get more discounts.

Not that, Hinata hysterically thought, discounts were relevant to this situation.

Yeah.

That.

Because, haha. Dragon.

The river dragon-creature blinked, and Hinata saw something like skin covering its eyes – a small sheen of transparent scales. _'I am not so easily offended by your habits, human, especially for one I've been waiting for such a long time,"_ the creature replied with a surprising amount of humour.

Hinata tried to be nonchalant as he glanced at the thing's _('Guardian',_ it rumbled in his head) snout, which when opened dispelled any camouflage of safety and revealed a gaping maw of rows and rows of… absolutely terrifying teeth, actually.

"Why do you need so many teeth if you don't eat people?" Hinata asked suspiciously, narrowing his eyes as he tried to glare as intimidatingly as he could back at the Guardian thing, before his eyes widened in realisation. "Oh, oh no, you're one of _those_ stories, aren't you? Those ones where they make you feel safe and then start roasting you alive, or dig you into the ground, or, or," and Hinata's panicked screaming in his brain for the stupid granny who sent him in here in the first place TO SAVE HIM PLEASE was disturbed by a warm chuckle.

' _Come, funny human. You are destined to be a hero, but you can only start your destiny if I give you one of the treasures I guard.'_

The waterbubble around Hinata's head moved, and forced his head to move with it. It felt kind of like glass, actually, since his head kept knocking on the back of the bubble kinda painfully, really, and uh.

"…My mother told me not to trust strangers," Hinata confessed, and the Guardian only laughed again.

' _I have watched your village since the beginning of time. I have watched you since you were born. Little one, be calm.'_

Hinata tried his best to contain the thought that immediately popped out of his head.

' _Hmm? How interesting, I do not understand your word. Pray tell, what is a stalker?'_

"Nothing! Absolutely nothing!" Hinata insisted, before starting to babble about how gloomy and dark the place they were going down into was. Even the gaps of the trees showed no light now – probably because they were way underneath the lake by now, the only glow the soft white shimmer of the Guardian's long, long line of spine and ribs.

His bubble caught up to the middle part of the Guardian's sinuous body around then, and it paused for a second to let him settle there before moving downwards a little quicker. It was certainly an experience he wasn't expecting to have this morning, an extremely small part of Hinata reflected. All the rest was dedicated to asking highly productive questions of the Guardian, as his teacher would be proud to notice. The dragon answered it all surprising amiability, for a creature with so many sharp teeth.

Hinata quickly forgot about being nervous.

"You've lived here for ten-thousand years?" Hinata squawked, the air bubble having encased his whole body after the Guardian realised Hinata was having trouble with water pressure. "That's so depressing!"

' _Why?'_ The Guardian humoured, even as it gave a disapproving hum when Hinata tried to see if he could touch its spine, the line of light underneath some watery-jelly-thing that didn't really have scales, so it seemed just like a simple task of him dipping his hand into a transparent version of his little sister's baking dough, really…

"You must get lonely! I would!" He bounced a little, poking the seemingly solid surface of the air bubble. What type of magic was that, anyway? He wanted to learn!

' _You are human, I am not,'_ the Guardian easily replied, one of its whirlpool eyes swivelling impossibly to stare at Hinata dead on. _'But we are here. Wait, little wriggly one,'_ it said as it settled down onto a dark rock floor, the world way to dark to see now, Hinata noticed with annoyance.

So he cracked a knuckle, blinked hard, and _looked_.

His vision amped up the shadows, but also revealed all those weird black shapes that had been creepy and dangerous looking were just humongous tree roots, the gaps between them letting him see the vague water currents that flowed beyond the Guardian's lair, a clean circle of rock as big as his village, really, with loads of cool carvings etched into it. Sitting near the middle, he could see the roots on all sides anchored into the rock, making a protective cage around it all.

Wait, right in the middle, the Guardian's tail was curled in huge loops around something. Was that…

Hinata was tempted to scratch his head, but his hand was blocked by the air bubble. Why was there a stone cottage all the way down here? It looked strangely human-sized too.

The Guardian finished its business, and turned back to Hinata.

' _This is yours if you wish it, tiny squiggly hero,'_ the Guardian suddenly echoed underneath him, and with his enhanced vision, Hinata saw the Guardian's tongue that had been extended towards some dark shadowy corner came back with something curled in it.

Curiosity surged.

However, the tongue kept it out of reach when he leaned in and tried to grab it. Hinata pouted and looked back at the one eye the Guardian had kept on him, the whirlpool eye swirling a little slower, maybe.

"What is it?" Hinata said, trying to keep his bouncing to a minimum as he squinted as best as he could.

' _Destiny.'_

When the tongue slowly unfurled, Hinata quickly retracted his eye's Boost because _ow_ , that hurt. The mirror itself shone like a palm-sized sun, a small thing that radiated magic in waves of intensity that Hinata had never felt before. Hinata's hands twitched, because this thing radiated pure _adventure_ , and he, he _wanted_ that, he _craved_ it.

The Guardian noted his reaction with a sort of detached amusement.

' _I will give this to you,'_ the Guardian said, shoving it into Hinata's waiting hands. It flashed when it touched his skin, the light suddenly near-blinding. _'I will give this to you because this will reveal your path to becoming the hero of this generation. A hero that may sadly be needed again…'_

The Guardian suddenly shifted again, its head tilting up. Hinata clutched his legs a little tighter around the jelly-like body of the creature as they started rising up again.

Hinata clutched the mirror to his body.

"Hero?" he echoed, hearing it again. Making something in his soul shiver, as his mind immediately imagined himself in adventurer's gear, standing victoriously on top of a mountain with a sword, maybe, with flowing hair and robes looking totally cool and badass as he glared into the sunset or something. Adventure.

' _I will give you a month for your decision,'_ the Guardian said. _'If you refuse your destiny, throw this mirror back into the pool in which you first dived into. It will land safely back to me, and your destiny will be left to another.'_

* * *

When Hinata reached the top, old lady Kobume just raised an eyebrow.

"I kicked you in so you fight water dragon like I did as training exercise, but you have no scratch. What happened?"

Hinata blinked at her, before glancing down at the old, stately mirror in his hands. Sure, it was palm-sized, but it was by no means small enough for him to hide it, and it _reeked_ of old magic. Granny Kobume wasn't one for tact; if she noticed she would ask.

Surely…?

"Nah, the Guardian was really nice!" Hinata said while waving the mirror around, pretending to stretch. Sure enough, Kobume didn't even notice it. Huh. "We talked a lot. It's really smart. And I think it's lonely, but it said it wasn't lonely, and also its been there a long time, did you know, hey, granny?"

Kobume gave Hinata a strange, considering look, before turning around with a _humph._

"Stop babbering, we go back to village."

Hinata watched his teacher's back as she lead back out the little tree cave, glancing at the pool, then at the mirror on his hands.

Back at home, after he'd apologised to his ma for being late to dinner, hugged his little sister, and practically dumped all the contents of his plate into his mouth in one go ( _'boys'_ , his mother and sister muttered with a simultaneous eyeroll and _man that was creepy)_ , he raced to his room and slammed the sliding door shut.

Then he pulled out the mirror.

His reflection stared back, big eyed, soft cheeked, a shock of orange on top. His felt along the sides of the mirror – nothing stood out, the metal was all smooth. He mushed his face against it. Traced the magic characters for ' _unlock'_ and other stuff onto it. Accidentally threw it against the wall (he'd shrieked and nearly had a heart attack, but it wasn't damaged at all, thankfully), and when he finally settled back, he was confused as to what all the magic inside this mirror _did_.

' _Ask it a question_ ', the watery, wavery voice of the Guardian swelled in his mind, and Hinata dropped the mirror again with a yelp of shock.

"Guardian?" He called out into the air, and then bit his lip to stop all the other questions from spilling out of his mouth. Nothing. No reply.

Hinata looked at the mirror in his hands.

"Ummm… Okay! Mirror, can you show me what Yukitaka is doing?"

In an instant, his reflection warped into an image of Yukitaka's creepy room. Yukitaka was counting something, and Hinata drew away in disgust when he realised Yukitaka was counting Salamander eyes. Again. Ugh!

Hinata was so glad he didn't have _any_ talent for ritual magic at all. Hinata wondered what he could ask next, before his lit up.

Of course!

"Mirror, can you show me my dad?"

Yukitaka's image shifted into a tall man (Hinata still dreamed he got his dad's genes – he was nearly thirteen, and it was about time his dad's tall genes trumped his mother's, right?) with a shock of orange hair carrying a long sword, staring into the dawn with flowing long guild robes. Hinata could barely believe it as he let his fingers rest on the mirror. He hadn't seen his dad in _years_ , as they only kept in contact through fortnightly letters, if the mail allowed.

' _Ask for the person most important to you,'_ a voice whispered in the air right over his shoulder

Hinata yelped and fell off the bed. The Guardian _really_ had to stop doing that, Hinata thought with a sour face as he hauled himself back up. Or maybe he should stop being startled so easily?

But Hinata easily complied.

"Mirror, show me the person most important to me!" He ordered imperiously, feeling like a cool, powerful wizard.

The mirror wavered, sifting through a few scenes – a boy with his hair all shaved and his sister leaning over a map with only a long track and the starry sky above them, then to another boy (more plain faced and less fierce) tending bees in the late afternoon. It flitted over a girl praying inside a church, to a short bouncy guy with hair that had a shock of yellow in it grinned wildly indoors at a whole wall of painted masks… before settling down on a boy Hinata had never seen before in his whole life in his village.

The boy had a scowl on his face, the sharpest eyes he'd ever seen, and something was oddly unsettling about the way he moved, a gingery too-careful jerk, as if he was awkward inside his own skin. He was thin like an unhealthy stick, sitting next to a small field that was overlooking a huge, white desert. His blue-black hair was swept away from his forehead in the wind, but the boy didn't even shiver, just hugged his legs closer to himself with those sharp eyes that seemed to glare at the horizon, challenging it for something unknown and Hinata might've thought to protest about how the mirror was obviously ripping him off (he'd expected his mother, or his sister, or even maybe his dad), or maybe he would've just left the scene by asking another question but… but he couldn't look away.

He couldn't look away at all, and his heart thundered in his chest as he held the mirror tighter in his hands. It should've been the most boring thing in the world, to watch this boy watch the world, but.

 _But_.

After five minutes, Hinata finally felt like he could breathe.

"Who is he?" He whispered to the air, suddenly feeling decades older. His heart was still _thump thump thump_ heavy and his fingers were digging into the mirror surface like they were trying to reach him. What was, who was this boy? Hinata's eyes tracked his face, somehow dissatisfied with what he saw (but what had he been expecting?), before settling down in bed, lying down and putting the mirror in front of his face. For the next few minutes, the boy in the mirror just continued sitting there, hair flapping away in the wind, sitting on the mountain way past sunset. Hinata found himself sitting still too, like he was next to him staring into the night-time stars with him, something in him desperate not to leave.

Then the boy got up, brushed off his pants, and the mirror's view followed the boy as he walked down the mountain to a small place where he slept on a tiny mat. And just like that, Hinata conked out too, because he hadn't realised, but he'd actually sat there for half a night. Waaaay past his bedtime. A person should always get ten hours of sleep!

(He got woken up by Natsu pouring a cup of cold water on his face though. Harsh! His little sister was way too harsh!)

* * *

Throughout the next few weeks, Hinata settled into routine. He'd do his stuff, finish his chores, do the exercises his old sadistic teacher thought up (Kobume was such a slavedriver) before going somewhere private to pull out the mirror and just… watch.

Kageyama Tobio (Hinata had found out his name he lip-read one of the villagers calling his name) was a few months younger than him, quite silent, and lived in a mountain village instead of an island tribe like his, and was so, _so_ lonely.

Hinata wanted to leap through the mirror and give him a hug. Make him smile a bit, at least! Even though he hadn't seen a smile even two weeks in, Hinata could somehow _imagine_ it like he's seen it dozens, hundreds of times before.

Which, admittedly, was strange, because Hinata's imagination had always been kind of crappy to be honest.

The village noted his strange behaviour though, but copped it to weird growing up antics – Hinata was totally fine doing everything he was supposed to, after all. Koji and Yukitaka were concerned, because they realised something wasn't right when Hinata brushed off their offers to go their hideout. Hinata had always craved adventure something fierce – their friend had never really fit into the sleepiness of the village, always bouncing, eager to go, eager to find something _exciting_ when there was nothing exciting to be had.

It had become routine for Hinata to take out the mirror tree in the mornings, settling on a tree so high no-one could follow. He noted with interest when Kageyama hefted up a pack and set off down the mountain – something totally new.

Hinata had to stop watching for lunch, training, helping Yukitaka collect more monkey butt fur, and then dinner, but when he started watching again, Kageyama was sleeping inside a small hut next to the desert with another boy next to him.

The next day, a nice-looking light-haired boy wearing armour started travelling with him.

Hinata may or may not have screeched at Kageyama for trusting a stranger so easily. Stranger danger! And then got yelled by his little sister.

(Natsu was still mad at him, because she was one of those light sleepers who couldn't get back to sleep easily. Hinata didn't know what to do! He'd already given her _at least_ three sticks of candy! What else did she want?)

They got attacked a week in, but they handled it and walked along this road for the next month or so, and Hinata _really_ should've been bored and started watched something else (he had an all-powerful mirror, and man, there were _so many things_ he could do with it!), maybe looked up his father a little more, or checked out what was behind those screens his mother always told him not to check, but. _But._

It was that 'but' again, that feeling of anxiety when he looked away from Kageyama.

Like, why?

No, really. Why?

Hinata was even starting to feel a little annoyance at himself, perching on a branch to watch how currently, the light-haired boy (Sugawara, Hinata knew, because Kageyama called his name often enough) and Kageyama got closer as the weeks went by, even though for some reason, the light-haired boy was kinda twitchy around Kageyama. But he liked to point things out, and Kageyama liked to listen? Something like that. It worked out, most of the time.

But talking about weird things, it was totally weird right, if with all the annoyance at his sudden dependency on watching the mirror for his emotional health, he also kept finding a lot of things that Kageyama did funny? Like, that weird scrunch of the eyebrows when Kageyama struggled with chopping mushrooms for dinner made him laugh, and the way he started following Sugawara like a duck behind its mother was _hilarious_ (especially since he could see Sugawara's face from the front, usually exasperation mixed with reluctant fondness).

Hinata just... he just couldn't look away.

Even _Hinata_ found himself a little creepy. But he couldn't help it!

Days flashed by like that, and the deadline that the Guardian had mentioned arrived – after a month, if he wanted to reject 'destiny', he'd just have to throw the mirror back into the pool of water. Simple. Easy.

For the first time in a month, Hinata raced back to the tree in the middle of the lake with his heart doing that weird heavy thump thing again, in anticipation and adrenaline. Choices. He'd never really needed much of those in life - a child never needed to choose much, and his ma had only recently started giving him more responsibility.

This was, Hinata complained in his head, such a _heavy_ choice too! It was like being given a taste of water when he'd never known what water was, before being told he was allowed to choose to live a life without water and live with _knowing_ he could have had it!

Hinata jumped unerringly back into the little cave that old lady Kobume had led him to that one time, his mind whirring with thoughts. Gazing into the pool, he clenched the mirror nervously in his hands. His fingers did that nervous tick thing, and he visibly stilled it just in case the Guardian could see (crazy though, because the Guardian obviously went into his _mind_ and all, but Kobume's lessons yesterday, of DO NOT LET ENEMIES SEE WEAKNESS were still a little too fresh).

The pool was as fathomless as always. Hinata imagined he could see a flash of the Guardian's water-scales, deep within.

The mirror was in his hands. It would be so easy to just... let go.

He stood there though. Waiting. It was a few minutes late, but Hinata wasn't all that surprised with the Guardian's voice echoed in his brain.

' _Choose',_ the voice urged.

And Hinata had thought long and hard about this, and he had two last questions left for the mirror. Just two more, before he decided.

"What will happen if I threw you back into the pool right now?" He asked, and the mirror showed him.

The mirror's Hinata went back into the village and smiled at Yukitaka and Koji, whose worried faces relaxed when he spent more time with them again. The next scene was obviously a few years later, as an older Hinata leapt through the trees and accidentally crashed into a tree from excess enthusiasm and got knocked out. A girl found him, and even Hinata _now_ found her really pretty, all pink hair and gold eyes. A smile that burned beautiful. Years later, they married, and Hinata had a daughter just as pretty as his future wife. A son with orange hair and liked _studying,_ horrifyingly enough. He grew old with a smile on his face, with good friends around him.

Hinata fingers trembled.

Then he asked.

"What will happen if I kept you? Can you show me?"

Instead of a smiling old man with greying orange hair with his daughter next to him as his son sang a song with his wife deep in the house, his sister next to him laughing at a stupid joke he made, Hinata saw himself struggling forward with tears on his face as he raced towards some sort of fire. A city was burning, and Hinata screamed and hurled himself straight in, desperate for something he didn't know—then something broke, shifted, and he was suddenly laughing around a campfire with a group of people, and there, Hinata's eyes widened. Kageyama. Kageyama sat next to him with those sharp eyes, warm as Hinata obviously told a joke and the other boy hummed, bumping their elbows together. The picture shifted, to where he was fighting for his life, surrounded by all sides by darkness filled with red eyes and the Hinata in the mirror stabbed and whirled as he protected a glowing azure figure behind him…

In the last scene, Hinata and Kageyama were sitting in a young spring field, still muddy and not grassy enough yet. They tilted back in unison, uncaring of the mud as they... Stargazed? Hinata was waving his arms around happily, babbling about something, and Kageyama next to him was struggling to contain a smile, shrugging in reply. Then mirror-Hinata glanced slyly at Kageyama, saying a joke maybe and Kageyama laughed. A full-blown, happy laugh.

But there was no old age. No promise of a happy end.

' _Choose_ '.

His whole life and everything he knew, for the possibility of meeting one person he's never even met with. It was crazy, it was so _obvious_ what people would want him to choose, what his common sense told him to choose. The pink-haired girl was gorgeous, and his daughter had the prettiest gold eyes. His son became a scholar. Natsu, all grown up, mother as she scolded him into becoming a functional adult...

A flash of sharp eyes, a look of loneliness. A yawning gape in his soul, reaching out for _something_ , something he'd never found.

For some reason, it was the easiest choice in the world.

Hinata stepped back, clutching the mirror to his chest, and right then, he felt the dragon rumble in his head.

' _I bid you good luck, young Hero,'_ it said, before quietening down.

Well, Hinata thought blankly, still unbelieving that he actually _did that._

His mother had always called him reckless. He'd never argue back again.

The next day, he told Kobume everything. When her eyes widened at all that whirling heavy destiny around her student, she just rolled her eyes and grumbled that he should've known better than _accept,_ the idiot. The former soothsayer-in-training then helped him to say farewell to his family (his mother was horrified, his sister was crying, but he'd already _chosen_ ).

In their village, it wasn't so odd for a youth to test themselves by going out over to the mainland, even if _youth_ usually meant fifteen-ish and not twelve.

When his mother protested, Kobume hobbled into the house and helped his mother with supplies, and when they both came out of the kitchen, his mother was calm and accepting, if not smiling. Hinata had been sitting out on the porch, writing letters for Yukitaka and Koji, Natsu quietly nibbling some winter melon by his side.

"Stay safe. Don't trust strangers so easily," his mother said, hugging him tight. "You're only _twelve_. I can't see your magic mirror, but remember you have an uncle somewhere over on the mainland, and you can find him whenever you need to, okay? Your father is a bit busy now, but I know he'll drop everything for you too, if you need it."

His mother drew back, but her hands were still on his shoulders. "Kobume, are you sure he can't… wait a few more years?"

Kobume sighed, her old wrinkled hands wrapping around each other. "I did a reading for Hinata after he tell me about this destiny. If he wants to even try success, he leaves by tonight."

Their village still believed in the old ways and Kobume's words hit his mother like a rock. His mother's look wavered and looked a little teary, before she let him go, mumbling about some extra bandages in the cabinets and stepped back into the house.

"Will you come back?" Natsu asked, quiet. "Will you be like dad?"

Hinata swallowed, before grinning, fierce.

"Of course, Natsu!" Hinata pounded his chest with a fist. "I'm your older brother! I'm _awesome_ at all the boosting exercises Granny gives me! I'll kick all this bad-guy butt, find the person I keep seeing in the mirror and come back all cool and tall and stuff! I'll even find dad and lug him back here!"

Natsu smiled at that, and bumped fists with him. "You promised!"

They all took a photograph together before the house, and his mother promptly copied it so that they all had a copy. It was with a heavy backpack that he set off on a small boat to the main continent, with hope and adventure in his heart.

Natsu stared at the small speck of orange, as her brother slowly sailed away.

"I hope you find Tobio too, brother," Natsu mumbled, before turning back to hold her mother's hand back to the village.

* * *

Okay, so Hinata might not have expected this.

"Oi, you okay?" A voice above his head said, sounding gruffly concerned as another shadow turned him over.

"W-w-water," Hinata croaked out, his hands shooting out to grab the other's pants. "Fooooooood," he groaned.

"Dammit, watch the pants!" The voice yelled even as the hands gently extracted the pants from Hinata's grip.

There was a girl laughing somewhere.

"Ryu, just give him some water and food. We have a little extra, don't we?"

"But sis! We might need it, just in case!" The other voice griped even as Hinata let his head flop back dramatically back into the dirt. In a ditch next to the road. Some type of weed was poking into his back, but he was too tired to even scratch _that_.

* * *

"Thanks!" Hinata beamed, bowing ten times to his saviours. They were truly angels! The Samaritans of all Samaritans! "You guys are really, really nice!"

They had even found his backpack for him, when he thought he'd lost it when the boat sank! When he rummaged through his bag, everything was still there too!

What wonderful people!

The girl laughed boisterously, and the two siblings gave him a terrifyingly identical smile.

Wow, they looked alike.

"No problem, kid! What's your name?" The girl said, punching his shoulder lightly. The younger brother was still packing their bags after giving him something to eat (the food had been _all the way at the bottom_ , dammit all).

"Hinata Shouyou! Please call me Hinata!"

"Well, Hinata. I'm Tanaka Saeko, and this is my idiot brother Tanaka Ryunosuke. It's nice to meet you too! Just call me Saeko – my younger brother has all these teen issues right now about his manly dignity and pride and not seeming sensitive and close, so just call him Tanaka, haha!"

Tanaka spluttered at his sister even as Hinata laughed.

"Sis, you can't just _say_ that!"

"Of course I can!

Hinata looked around curiously now, now that he had energy. The coastal road was straight and empty except these two, mostly, and Hinata raised a curious eyebrow at them now.

"Hey, why are you guys here? Why is nobody here? Where did you get those awesome swords? And where am I?" Hinata shot rapid fire, craning around to try and see whether he could see any other landmark that wasn't beach, ocean, or road.

"Woah, easy, Hinata," Saeko responded, Tanaka straightening now that he'd finished packing. "Calm down."

Tanaka pushed forward though, and with a grand pose and gesture, he gave a wide, glinting smile suitable for a toothpaste ad.

"Young Hinata, let me wisen you up to our ways. Me and big sis here, you know? We're _adventurers_. Isn't that cool?"

Hinata's eyes sparkled when he heard the 'adventurers', thinking about all those teen-novels he read about life on the road, stepping into the unknown with every step with only your heart to guide the way! Vigilanteing across the nation! Fulfilling requests and getting rewards from kings!

"Adventurers?" Hinata managed to gush out his enthusiasm around the garble that wanted to explode out, "that's _so cool_."

"Right? And you said my sword was awesome, right? Here, behold!" Tanaka unsheathed his sword and held it under the sunlight to make it as glinty as he could. Since he practiced posing all the time, he actually managed to make it rather more glinty than any effort made through sheer coincidence.

Hinata's jaw dropped, because swords hadn't been allowed in his tribe, generally speaking.

"You're so cool, Tanaka!"

"Ahahaha! Praise me again!"

"So cool!"

Tanaka struck another pose. Hinata clapped enthusiastically.

Saeko facepalmed.

Idiots.

* * *

 _And thus, Hinata splendidly steps onto the path of being the ultimate stalker~ This is just a repost with edits, so I was like... I should just get this over with huh. __

 _Hinata is the very annoying dorm-mate who doesn't think before grabbing food from the fridge, and not realising that he grabbed someone else's food by accident. It's not his fault it looked tasty!_

 _Very, very randomly, Hinata likes folding socks. He just does. It's calming._


End file.
